


Ghost

by theherocomplex



Series: Commander Eliza Shepard [6]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, F/M, Horror, M/M, Memory Loss, Psychological Horror, Romance, Shakarian - Freeform, Slow Build, Supernatural Elements, post-ME1, the Omega years
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-31
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-13 13:55:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 48
Words: 219,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/825044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theherocomplex/pseuds/theherocomplex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Shepard, death is just another technicality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: this fic contains interspecies sex, violence, and an undetermined number of supernatural events.

 

  
***

The morning Garrus lost his mind, he woke up to find Shepard sitting next to him. She looked exhausted.

“Hey, Garrus,” she said.

“Shepard?” He tried to sit up, got tangled in his sheets, and fell back to his pillows. Shepard’s smile grew. “What are you doing in my apartment?”

“You’re about to get some bad news. Sorry about that.”

His omni-tool chimed with the new-message alert -- once, twice, three times. Still groggy, he flipped the display up and scrolled through his messages.

“Wait,” he said. “You can’t -- what is this?”

“Be safe out there, Garrus.”

She was gone.

“Not possible,” he told the space where she wasn’t. “You’re not --”

By the time he got dressed, it was all over the extranet.

***

Garrus left right after the funeral.

Kaidan tried to talk to him -- he even went so far as to grab Garrus’ arm, to pull him back as he walked out the door. One look at his face and Kaidan let go, backing away with his hands raised in surrender. He went to the corner where Liara sobbed, Tali’s arm around her shoulder.

Garrus walked away.

They could share their grief. He didn’t have anyone to share his madness.

***

If Garrus still cared, Omega would have terrified him. As it happened, it just disgusted him.

He got a hundred yards from the shuttle bay before he ran into his first crime: a robbery, two vorcha against a batarian.

His rifle was still in its case, but he had his pistol.

Two perfect headshots later, he knew he’d come to the right place.

***

Without the artificial daylight of the Citadel Wards, it was easy to lose track of time. Omega existed in perpetual twilight, and Garrus found he could move easily in the shadows, slipping into view long enough for his enemies to glimpse what killed them. None of them knew his face; he only took off his helmet to sleep or eat, and that he did rarely.

It was a strangely pure life, for a place as filthy as Omega.

***

He dreamed of Shepard exactly four times.

***

Forty-seven days after he came to Omega, Garrus woke up to find Shepard sitting next to him again.

“Hey,” she said.

He rolled over and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Garrus, wake up.”

_No. No. I’m already crazy, don’t you see? I’m on Omega. My life expectancy can probably be measured in weeks, at best. You can’t make me any crazier._

“Dammit, Garrus, get up!” A hand collided with his cowl. “They’re coming.”

“Who’s coming?” The first burst of adrenalin hit. She sounded so present it stung.

“Blood Pack. You really messed up their last shipment. Now get up! They’re maybe five minutes out.” The urgency in her voice got him moving, more out of habit than any real alarm.

“Come on, Garrus.” She shoved him toward his armor. “Get the lead out.”

As far as hallucinations went, this was a fairly pleasant one. Impending death was something he’d gotten used to a while back, and Shepard was there.

“So. Is this how it’s going to be now?” Shepard didn’t reply. “The last time you showed up, it was to tell me you’d died. Now you’re here, telling me I’m about to die. Am I just special, or have you made visits like this to everyone else?”

He could have sworn he felt warmth when her hand touched his arm. “I mean it, Garrus. Move.”

 _Humor the hallucination._ He got into his armor and reached for his rifle.

Shepard stood at the door, and the sight of her was a punch in the gut.

He’d chosen this back room because of its anonymity -- broken crates, stained walls, a vague musty odor. No one who ever came here wanted to come back again, or remembered it once they left. A safe haven for a vigilante. Dark and quiet.

Not now. She wavered under his gaze, like a candle flame caught in a sigh.

“You’ve got questions, I get that, but we have to run.” She nodded at the door. “You ready?”

“Oh, I’m ready,” he said, feeling lighter than he had in weeks. For all he knew, someone could have shot him in the head while he slept and this was his brain’s way of shutting off the lights. As far as dying went, this was fairly painless.

Painless, at least, until she smiled at him. “Then let’s go,” she said. “I’ve got a safe place for you, but we have to hurry.”

***

Shepard took him on a roundabout, tangled path through the Gozu district before climbing up into a disused ventilation shaft. After that, they slipped from alley to alley, narrowly avoiding a Blue Suns patrol when the mercs came laughing out of a dive bar. Shepard pushed him back against the wall and held him there, a cool hand over his mouth. His armor dug into her chest, but when he tried to shift, she shook her head.

When the mercs were gone, she stepped away. Garrus let out a long breath. She’d had real weight when she leaned against him.

Before he had time to wonder more than what if, she was waving him on.

“Not much farther -- just stay quiet. More patrols.”

He nodded. Talking wasted breath he could use for running, and he had no idea what he would ask if he had the breath to spare.

They ran in silence. Once or twice she made them double back and hide, and every time a merc patrol passed, talking in low voices about some new troublemaker.

After the second near-miss, Shepard grinned at him.

“You know they’re talking about you, right? Starting to make a name for yourself, Garrus. Should have known you’d start trouble if you went off on your own.”

“I didn’t start trouble,” he fired back in a whisper. “Those scum did. I’m just cleaning up.”

“I know, big guy. Just giving you a hard time.” She peered around the corner. “Ready to keep going?” She waited long enough for him to nod before she was up and moving.

They didn’t stop. Shepard pushed him to go faster, always faster, goading him when he started to slow down. Garrus felt his pride rise to the bait, and put on a last burst of speed to catch up with her. For the last two blocks, they were neck-and-neck.

She stopped so suddenly that he blew past her, and had to jog back to stand at her side.

“I know it’s not much,” Shepard said, “but it’s home.”

They stood at the foot of a bridge, staring up at an abandoned apartment building. Garrus nodded, too focused on catching his breath to pay much attention to what Shepard said. She wasn’t breathing hard, or even sweating.

“Come on,” she said. “Time to get you settled in.”

His footsteps sounded large and hollow on the bridge. The door’s lock had been hacked and he could hear the ancient machinery scraping in protest as he shoved it open to let her in.

The inside was dark. Not long ago, something had crawled here to die, and the sweet smell of rot filled his nose. He coughed and covered his mouth.

“Sorry about that,” said Shepard. She moved farther into the room, picking her way carefully into the gloom until she disappeared completely. “I didn’t have time to clean before I had to come find you. Took me forever to find this place. Apparently there’s a shortage of abandoned but semi-livable buildings here on Omega. Who knew? Had a time limit too. Blood Pack had picked up your trail. Where’s the damn -- oh, here it is. Cover your eyes, Garrus.”

“What?” he said, trying to follow the path of her conversation. When the lights came on, dim and flickering, he hissed and blinked.

“Told you to cover your eyes,” Shepard smirked at him from across the room. “Oh, wow, that’s nasty. Don’t look in that corner.”

When his vision cleared, he simply stared at her. She’d be gone soon, and he wanted to get his fill before she evaporated.

She didn’t disappear. She waited, hands on her hips, eyes never leaving his face.

“Spit it out, Garrus,” she told him.

“You --”

“Yeah, I did.”

“But you’re here.”

“Yeah.” She crossed the room to stand an arm’s length away. “I’m here. Don’t ask me why, or how.” She shuddered. “How hurts too much.”

He looked away.

“Garrus? You good?”

He barked a laugh. “No, Commander, I’m not.” There was something bitter in his throat. “How could I possibly be okay? What do you want? Why are you -- why did you come here?” _To me?_

Shepard was silent for a long time. Garrus waited. Now she’d disappear.

She folded her arms, a grin haunting the corners of her mouth. “I’m here to help,” she said. “If you’re going to clean up Omega, you’re going to need a hand. Besides,” the grin slipped sideways and dropped away, “it’s not like I have anything else to do.”

***

It took most of a day, but they made the building habitable. Shepard got rid of the horrible thing moldering in the corner while Garrus cleared out the old clothes and rotted food from the rooms upstairs. The furniture that had been left behind was mostly broken or missing pieces, so he piled them into the garbage compactor -- which, for a miracle, was still working.

When he was done, everything was very quiet.

“Shepard?” he called, unsure if he wanted her to answer. Something shifted below him, metal on metal, and then there was nothing but silence.

He found Shepard at the foot of the bridge, staring back the way they had come. She was drawn and pale, more tired than he could remember her looking.

“It’s a good position,” she said. “Snipers on the balcony, proximity charges there and there. We can move those old crates so they block entry from either side, so the only way enemies can come at us is from the bridge. It’ll funnel them into scope.” When he didn’t reply, she started to turn around but stopped herself. “What do you think?” she asked.

 _We._ She said we, like nothing had changed and they were briefing for a mission on the Normandy. _We,_ like they were still a team and she hadn’t --

“I’m sure it’s fine.”

“Garrus.” There was a warning in her voice. He closed his eyes. “You can’t do this alone.”

“Do you see anyone else who was on the Normandy?” His voice clattered against the bare walls.

He heard Shepard take a step toward him. “None of them would have abandoned you. They were your friends, Garrus.”

“They were _your crew_. There’s a difference. After you were gone, there was nothing holding us together.”

She made a rough, dismissive noise. “The fight belonged to all of us. I know they didn’t leave you. You _left_.”

Garrus turned, snarling, to find Shepard a hand’s length away. “Why did you leave?” she asked. Her voice never wavered. “Why did you give up on being a Spectre, Garrus? What made you come here?” She swept her hand out toward the skyline.

His hands clenched uselessly and fell to his side. “You left,” he said. It was only half an answer, and Shepard knew it.

“I didn’t do it on purpose.” When he tried to look away, she grabbed his chin and pulled him back to meet her gaze. “If you’re trying to paint this as you bringing justice to Omega, I’m not buying it. Why did you come here?”

He tried to pull back but her hand tightened painfully.

“You got a death wish, Vakarian? You want to go out in a blaze of glory?”

_Yes. Yes._

She read the answer in his face. Her mouth quirked, and she looked away.

“Take it from me.” When she looked back at him, her eyes glittered. “Fire is no way to die.”

Shepard let go of his face and walked back to the end of the bridge. Garrus touched his chin. The phantom sensation of her cool hand lingered.

A minute later, she said, “Did they give me a nice funeral?”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” he ground out through clenched teeth.

“Then our conversation options are pretty slim. You won’t talk about fortifications, you won’t talk about why you’re here, you won’t talk about me being dead.”

“Stop it,” Garrus growled. Shepard laughed. The sound spiraled out of her mouth, all jagged lines.

“No, really. What else is there to talk about? One minute I was getting Joker into the escape pod, the next I couldn’t breathe.”

“Stop it!” he shouted. “Whatever you are, whatever happened to you, I don’t want to hear it.”

“Well _tough shit_ , Vakarian. I’ve got no one else to talk to.” She scrubbed a hand over her face. “Like it or not, you’re stuck with me.”

The silence closed around them. Shepard shut her eyes. Garrus stared at her, looking for signs of death. If there were any, he couldn’t see them.

“Do turians believe in ghosts?”

The word came through his translator as _spirits_ , but he knew that wasn’t what she was asking.

“No,” he said. “Once you’re gone, you’re gone.”

“So this is something new for you, huh?” She folded her arms and cocked her hip. The posture was so familiar his throat closed. “Congratulations, Vakarian, you’re the first turian to be haunted.”

Anger twisted in his gut. “This isn’t funny,” he snapped, the dual tones of his voice fraying. “You’re dead, Shepard. You’re supposed to be gone, not hanging around here with me in this hole. What did you have to come back for?”

“I’m here to help you,” she said. Garrus grated out a laugh.

“Help me? There’s nothing to help. We _failed_. No one listened. They’re blaming it all on the geth. Sovereign nearly destroyed the Citadel and no one believed us. And everyone else, they just went back to their lives. I tried, but I couldn’t, not knowing -- ” He grabbed his head, talons digging into his skin. If he could dig deep enough, he could tear out his guilt and his fury. His head would be quiet again. “The Reapers are still coming, and without you, no one will listen, Commander.”

“Garrus, Garrus.” The gentleness in her voice was unbearable. Shepard was brave and kind and loyal, but she was only gentle when someone was hopeless. “Look at me.”

“You want to know why I came to Omega? I came because I wanted to make sure when the Reapers came, I’d done all I could to make sure life was good for people who deserved it. I’m here to clean up.” His voice was savage. “I’m making it brighter before it all ends.”

It was all so pointless. He wanted to scream but when he opened his mouth, nothing came out.

Somehow, Shepard was standing in front of him now. He felt her hands on his, pulling them away before they could do real damage. She held his hands against her chest, and said his name until he opened his eyes.

“You’re not alone, Garrus,” she said. He slumped down, his head pressed against her shoulder, and after a long pause, her hand came to rest on the side of his face. “I’m here.”


	2. Chapter 2

Garrus slept.

***

He woke up feeling like his bones had been replaced with crushed glass, with gritty eyes and stiff hands. 

“Water bottle’s on the table,” said Shepard from the doorway, “along with painkillers and some dextro-friendly ration packs.” 

He kept his back to her. “How long was I out?” 

“Almost fifteen hours. I was going to wake you after ten, but I decided to let sleeping turians lie.” 

Garrus rolled over and sat up with a grunt. 

“Is there anything else you need? I can go get -- I don’t know, stuff. Things. It might take me a while. Hard to carry a lot of stuff at once. Took me almost two hours just to get all of that.” She ran a hand through her hair. Garrus could feel her gaze on the side of his face. “Help me out here, Garrus. What do you need?” 

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, grateful that he’d kept his pants on when the old sheet fell away. “I’m fine, Shepard. Well, not really,” he amended. She always knew when he was lying. “I feel like crap, but that’s a month and a half of not sleeping catching up to me. I’ll be fine.” 

Shepard hovered in the doorway.

“Did you sleep at all?”

She folded her arms. “I can’t sleep.” Before he could do more than feel stupid for asking the question, she gave him a hard little smile. “I’m going to have a very productive afterlife.”

“So what did you do all night? Sit here and watch me?” 

Shepard’s lack of response was all the answer he needed. “Spirits, Shepard, didn’t you have anything better to do?” 

“Like what?” Her voice was neutral. “Until I’m sure this location is secure, I’m not leaving you alone longer than I have to. Besides, I wasn’t watching you.” She pointed down the hall. “I spent most of the night on the balcony. It’s an excellent sniper position. Like I said.” 

Garrus shoved off the bed with a hiss. His tunic and armor were still where he had dropped them the night before. He dressed and tried to ignore how he smelled like old sweat and dirt. Nothing stayed clean on Omega. 

“We have limited resources,” she said. “I’m using what we’ve got.” 

“Great.” 

He heard her teeth close over her reply. Dirt gritted under her feet as she turned and left. 

A handful of seconds later, Garrus followed her. Shepard had only made it as far as the main living area. One couch had survived his purge, and she sat on the edge of the seat, elbows balanced on knees and her face buried in her hands. 

“If you want me to leave, fine,” she said through her fingers. “I’ll leave. I have no interest in sticking around someone who hates me for dying.” 

“Shepard, I don’t...” 

“But you should know, I went to see everyone else. Kaidan, Tali, Wrex --” Shepard’s voice trembled, but she forced herself on. “Liara. None of them could see me. I shouted in their faces and they didn’t hear a word I said. I tried throwing things but I just got so tired --” She winced. “No one can see me. No one except you. What makes you so special?”

The last sentence wasn’t meant for him, but it hurt to hear her say it. She realized it a moment later. 

“Oh god, I’m sorry, Garrus. That was an awful thing to say.” 

“I’ve heard worse,” He sat down across from her. “I’ve been wondering that too. Why me? Why not Liara?” He couldn’t help the way his voice lifted in a question.

Shepard peered at him through her fingertips. “What are you implying?” 

“You and -- well, you and Liara, weren’t you, ah?” 

“Were we _what?_ ” Shepard asked. Garrus squirmed. 

“You melded, or whatever the asari do. That -- thing.” 

Shepard made what might have been a laugh. “Seriously? That’s what you’re concerned about?”

“It was just a question!” He threw up his hands, and realized with resignation that it was a gesture he’d picked up from the human crew. “I thought you two were, I don’t know, _connected_. Together.” _In love_ , his brain helpfully supplied, but he cut himself off before he could say it. 

“Me and --” Shepard let her hands fall and leaned back against the couch. “No. I can see why you’d think that, though. Kaidan did too.”

“Oh,” said Garrus, feeling strangely reassured. “Wait. Kaidan? So it was you and --” 

“Why are you so interested in my sex life, Garrus?” Shepard half-grinned at him. “For the record, and because this conversation is already awkward enough, I did not sleep with Liara. Or Kaidan. Or Tali. Or anyone else on the Normandy.” She squinted at him. “Did _you_ sleep with anyone on the Normandy? You and Ashley would have made a cute couple.” 

“What?” he sputtered, his neck going hot until he saw Shepard turn away to hide her grin. “Oh. Oh. Right.” 

“Don’t ever play poker, Garrus.” 

“I’ll take it under advisement.” The silence stretched out between them, not as frosty as before, but nowhere near friendly. 

“Did you see Ash?” 

Shepard waited before answering. “No.” Her mouth constricted. “I kind of hoped she’d be hanging around too, even if she just wanted to yell at me for getting myself blown up.” 

Garrus laughed. It hurt, but everything hurt when he thought about Ash, left behind to die. They hadn’t exactly been friends, but he had trusted her. However badly he wanted to punch her when she started running off at the mouth, she’d always had his back. “I would have liked to see that. The ghost of Commander Shepard, getting -- what’s the phrase? -- getting her ass handed to her by the ghost of Gunnery Chief Williams.” 

“Cute, Garrus.” Shepard picked at a hole in her pants. “A regular ghost party.” She didn’t seem inclined to say anything else, but he felt like he had to keep the conversation moving. 

“We -- turians -- believe in spirits. I never really paid attention to them.” Shepard’s hand went still on her leg. “They represent the honor of a squad, or, I don’t know, the beauty of a field.”

“But you don’t pray to them.” 

“Not really, not like humans do, or the asari. They just _are_.” Garrus forced himself to meet Shepard’s eyes. “I barely had a chance to get used to you being dead. Now I don’t know what to think.” 

She let out a long breath. “I didn’t mean to screw up your life, Garrus. Like I said, I can go if you want me to. But I couldn’t just leave you for the Blood Pack.” 

“You didn’t screw up my life,” he said. “I had already done a pretty good job of it on my own. I decided to come to Omega, remember?” She chuckled.

“True.” Her hand tightened on her leg. She pushed herself up, inclining her body toward his. He leaned forward, and the space between them could be measured in inches. “So. What do you want to do?” 

He thought about it. What did he want? 

He wanted to be brave, to keep fighting. 

He didn’t want Shepard to leave. 

“If we’re going to do this,” he said slowly. “We’re going to need a team. No way I can hold this position, not even with you on my side, Shepard.” 

“A team, huh?” she said. “Where are we going to find anyone crazy enough to help us?” 

“This is Omega. Insanity’s at a premium.” She snickered. 

“Then what? Once we’ve cleaned out Omega, what’s our next move?” 

“I thought dying would have made you patient,” he said, and regretted it immediately. Shepard just laughed, and his heart squeezed painfully. 

“I’m still me,” she said. “Being dead is just a technicality.” 

***

His new name came out of nowhere. 

Garrus never found out who started it, and he felt like it was bad luck to ask if Shepard had heard anything on her solitary rambles through Omega. Somewhere, somehow, someone he helped gave him a name. 

The name burned through Omega like the city was kindling. 

_Archangel._

*** 

Shepard never called him Archangel.

***

Shepard took to disappearing for days. 

The first time she left, Garrus didn’t leave the apartment until she came back two days later. She appeared behind him as he was methodically shredding his third uneaten ration pack. He felt the change in air pressure seconds before she started talking. 

“Eclipse mercs are setting up a new base in the lower levels of the Kartu District. Looks like they’re trying to branch out, take over some of Blue Suns’ business. Could get ugly, but --” 

“Where the hell were you?” Garrus managed to keep from shouting with the last thread of his restraint. Shepard blinked at him. 

“Recon,” she bit out. 

“Recon,” said Garrus. “ _Recon._ ”

“Is there a problem, Garrus?” She clasped her hands behind her back. 

“You were gone,” he said. “You didn’t say anything, you just left.” 

“Your point?” Shepard tilted her head. “Should I have left a note? _Dear Garrus, I’m currently haunting dark corners of Omega, eavesdropping on mercs. Home before dinner._ ” 

With a massive effort, Garrus swallowed his anger and unclenched his hand from the edge of the table. Shepard’s eyes followed the motion. Her posture relaxed a fraction. 

“You want to build a team, that’s great. But right now, I’m what you’ve got, Garrus. And you have to let me use my... unique qualities. I can’t hold a gun for more than three minutes without feeling like I’m about to collapse, so I can’t fight. But listening? That I can do.” Shepard turned away, but he caught her arm and pulled her back. He caught her off-balance and she nearly stumbled into him. 

“If you’re on my team, Shepard, you can’t disappear without telling me.” 

“That an order, Vakarian?” 

“If that makes it easier, yes.” He let go of her arm. “Never thought I’d see the day when you’d be taking orders from me, Shepard.” 

“Impossible things happen all the time.” Shepard leaned against the table. “So. You want me to tell you what I heard, or do you have more food to destroy?” 

 

*** 

Garrus found his first squad member while he was tracking a mid-level slaver who’d been using Omega as a waystation. In between taking down the slaver’s shields with a concussive round and switching back to regular ammo for the kill, Garrus saw a flicker of movement from halfway down the alley. 

Ten seconds later, the slaver was dead and the biggest human Garrus had ever seen was standing in front of him, with bloody hands and a wide grin. 

“I like usin’ me fists,” he announced, without preamble. “Sorry for takin’ yer kill, but it looked like so much fun I had to give it a go. Archangel, right?”

Butler was the only name the man gave, and Garrus didn’t ask for another. His arms were criss-crossed with scars, and a long time ago, someone had sliced his mouth open on either side. Shepard called it a _Glasgow smile_ , and wouldn’t elaborate when Garrus asked. 

“My god, he’s a bruiser,” was Shepard’s only other comment when Garrus asked her what she thought.

“Come on, Shepard.” Nearly a month had passed since she appeared at his bedside, and even though there wasn’t anything close to intimacy between them, he felt like he could prod without getting his head bitten off. “You have to have something more to say.” 

She shrugged with one shoulder. “It’s your operation, Garrus. I’m not in command here, you are. Do you trust him?” 

“Not yet,” Garrus answered. “But he stepped in to fight when he didn’t have to. And nothing he’s said makes me think he has merc ties. There are a few ways to tell, some obvious signs. I learned them at C-Sec.” He adjusted his armor. “But he knows who I am -- well, he knows what Archangel looks like. That’s dangerous.”

“He’s the only living person on this rock who does,” said Shepard, and Garrus impressed himself by not cringing. “I can watch him,” she offered, a little stiffly. “Have to do something with my nights.” 

For lack of something to say, Garrus nodded. 

***  
It wasn’t until much later Garrus realized Shepard had sounded _jealous_.


	3. Chapter 3

Two months after Shepard reappeared, the squad was four strong and the mercs had started to pay attention.

Butler turned out to be handy with more than his fists; he was deadly with a submachine gun. He introduced Garrus to Erash, a salarian medic who implied a history with STG. Erash introduced Garrus to a silent batarian named Vortash, who once waited three days for a kill on a Red Sand smuggler. 

Force of habit made him stick to Shepard’s old three-person team formation, but there was strategic sense behind his choice. Someone had to stay behind and hold the base. He cycled through his new squad members, trying to avoid overuse while still anticipating who would be best for a given mission. 

Garrus had gained a whole new respect for Shepard’s ability to plan a ground squad. At times, he thought he spent more time planning how to kill mercs than actually doing it. 

Not today. Today he had three more kills to add to his count, and his whole team made it back alive.

He tried not to groan. It had been a long day, and what he wanted was a shower, a drink, and his bed, in that order. 

Shepard had taken to coming into his room after a mission, just to listen. There were nights he didn’t feel like talking, and she’d leave almost right away. Tonight, he wanted her company. They’d gone up against a particularly vicious group of vorcha, and nearly ended up torn and gutted before Erash, quite literally, exploded them out. 

The medic had been doubly useful that day. Garrus and Vortash had taken hits at close range -- Garrus in the shoulder, Vortash in the side -- and the dislocated shoulder and broken ribs would have slowed down their escape if the salarian hadn’t been able to deal with them. 

He left the door to his room open, and focused on keeping his sore shoulder as still as possible. There were painkillers in his kit under the bed, but there was a bottle of whiskey too, and he already knew what his preference was. 

The rest of the squad was already in their room, getting ready to hit the showers before sleeping. He was alone. 

He felt the air shudder behind him, displaced by a body that hadn’t been there a second ago. 

“Except for the salarian, you could be a Blue Suns outfit,” Shepard commented. When he glanced over his good shoulder, her back was to him, her eyes fixed on the closed door of the squad’s room. “Smart.” 

“Agreed,” said Garrus. “But I can’t claim the credit. They came to me.” He popped the final clasp and shrugged out of his armor. He couldn’t stop a sigh from slipping out of him when the weight disappeared and he could finally take a full breath again. When he tried to stretch, he hissed in pain. 

“Something wrong?” said Shepard. 

Garrus debated lying for all of two seconds before he felt Shepard’s hand on the back of his cowl, her fingers probing until they hit the bruise over his shoulder. He hissed again. 

“Concussive round at short range. My shields were down,” he admitted. “It’s nothing.” 

Shepard’s fingers twisted painfully into the bruise. Garrus almost yelled with the sudden stab of pain and tried to cover it with a cough. 

“Nothing, huh?” She pulled her hand away. “A dislocated shoulder isn’t _nothing_ , Garrus.” 

“How do you -- Shepard.” He turned around. “Are you following us?” 

Shepard looked back, unblinking. “I had your six,” she said calmly. Garrus clenched his fists and waited. The expected anger didn’t come. He had a moment of pure annoyance -- how could she have his six? She was _dead_ \-- but a warmer feeling replaced it. He forced himself not to smile at her. 

“Well, next time, make sure I don’t get hit. Even with medi-gel, this still hurts like a bitch.”

“All right, smart guy. Shirt off.” Shepard made a _hurry-up_ sign with her hands. “Let me take a look.” 

“Aah, Shepard, as much as I appreciate the gesture, I don’t think you’re a qualified medical professional.” 

“Shirt off, Garrus. I want to make sure you’re not hiding any other grievous injuries from me.” 

He pulled off his tunic. Shepard reached out to touch his carapace, but stopped an inch away. She moved her hands over his plates without actually touching him, her brows puckering as she traced the contours of his body. 

“Turn around,” she said. He grabbed her hands instead. Shepard jumped but didn’t pull away. 

“How long have you been following us?” 

“Since you first went out with Butler,” she answered, without any shame. “I told you I’d watch him.” 

It seemed like a very long time ago that he’d ever had doubts about Butler. Now he knew the man -- he’d even met his wife, a slim-hipped, dark-skinned woman named Nalah who worked in a clinic down in the Gozu district. She’d smiled when Butler introduced them, using Garrus’ real name, but if she had any guesses about who he was, she never voiced them. 

Butler wasn’t his right hand, but he was a strong arm. 

“You don’t need to worry about Butler,” Garrus told her. “Or any of them. I trust them.” 

“It’s not about trust,” said Shepard. “It’s about you, Garrus.” 

The warmth was heat now, a fire instead of an ember. “Me?” he asked. 

“You’re not joining me.” She pulled her hands away. “I won’t let it happen.” Shepard looked like she was about to say something else, and Garrus found himself very invested in what it was. She shook her head. 

“I’ll be down at the bridge,” she said. “Get some rest, Garrus.” 

***

They were four months in, and rumors about Archangel outnumbered the known truths, ten to one. The squad kept growing.

Two asari got invites to the squad when Garrus and Vortash found them squaring off against six vorcha. They wanted to fill their maiden days with something more meaningful than dancing in a bar. 

“Our dad was a turian,” said Mierin with a lopsided grin. “We’ve got a soft spot for you guys.” Melanis nodded at her side. “And if you’ve got a plan to get this place back on its feet, we’re in.” 

Arnold Monteague -- who preferred to be known by his last name only and was _very_ emphatic about it -- was a former Alliance medic. Shepard tipped them off about the batarians who were trashing his clinic, but they barely got there in time to pull him and his patients out. Monteague swore too quickly and too often for the non-humans’ translators to handle, but his hands were just as fast, and they were the only things that kept Mierin from bleeding out before they got her back to base. 

Monteague brought along an ex-Blue Suns merc, Ripper, whom he described in turns as his bodyguard, his boyfriend, and his nurse. Garrus had his doubts about the man’s merc ties, but Shepard watched Ripper for weeks and never saw anything to worry her. 

He trusted Shepard. Some things never changed.

***

Weaver, Sensat and Grundan Krul were the last to join. Shepard found them barricaded in an old storage locker, being starved to death by the Blue Suns for trying to push the mercs out of their neighborhood. The battle to free them took almost a day, and Monteague and Erash ran themselves to exhaustion patching everyone up and treating the three rescuees for malnutrition. 

Weaver was barely out of her teens. Garrus’ first instinct was to buy her a ticket off Omega before he learned she had a talent for electronics; her upgrade to the squad’s drones saw a seventeen percent increase in shield duration. When she asked to stay, he agreed. Reluctantly.

When Sensat was free, he asked about Weaver, and then asked for a gun. Garrus handed him his spare pistol, and the salarian blew the head off a merc who had managed to stagger to her feet. He handed the gun back to Garrus without a word. For two years, he’d be the most ruthless salarian Garrus ever met.

Krul gave no history and barely talked to anyone other than Weaver or Vortash. The two batarians kept to themselves, other than when Melanis or Mierin came around. The sisters were the only ones who got smiles out of Vortash -- though Weaver kept trying, no matter how many times she failed. 

They weren’t what he expected, not any of them, but they were solid. Each one of them wanted what Garrus did: a clean Omega, a healthy Omega. 

It wasn’t their fault that he wanted more. 

*** 

His squad called him _boss_. 

Shepard still just called him Garrus. 

*** 

The squad was eleven strong, and Garrus was happy to keep it there. Prime numbers felt lucky.

Then Butler came back from Afterlife with his arm slung around the shoulders of a turian, booming a greeting across the bridge. 

“Goddess,” breathed Melanis. She glared down at Butler. “Want me to Warp them over the edge, boss?” Her hands flared blue. 

The quiet explosion of air behind him meant Shepard had arrived. From the corner of his eye, he saw her nod. 

“No,” said Garrus. “Let them cross. I’ll deal with him downstairs. Eyes ahead.” Melanis jerked her head at Sensat. They bracketed the balcony. Garrus took his time going down the stairs. 

“You see anything?” he asked under his breath. Shepard’s hand brushed his arm. 

“Nothing of interest.” Her voice was close to his ear. “He met Nalah at Afterlife. After she left, he broke up a fight between two batarians. The turian helped. They bought each other drinks. Now they’re here. He’s good. Moves almost as fast as you do. I’m not surprised Butler brought him back.” 

“Advertising our location,” Garrus grumbled. Weaver half-rose from her work bench. 

“Boss?” 

Garrus waved her back. 

“Boss!” roared Butler. 

Shepard laughed. “Shut him up before the mercs figure out where we are and decide to attack at once.” 

Merc companies _cooperating?_ “Never happen,” he murmured. 

Shepard nudged him. “Don’t jinx yourself, big guy.” 

Vortash was at the door, rifle aimed at the exact point where Butler was hollering to be let in. Garrus keyed in the door code and folded his arms. 

“Boss!” Butler bellowed. He swung his arm from the turian’s shoulders and beamed. The scarred skin at his mouth puckered and twisted. “Oi, boss, got us a new recruit!” 

“He’s not drunk,” Shepard answered before Garrus knew he’d thought the question. “Three beers only. Wouldn’t even get him buzzed.”

“Get in,” Garrus ordered. Butler’s smile dropped away. “Bring the _recruit_ , too.”

Butler and the turian shuffled in. Butler looked like he was just starting to realize his mistake, and the turian couldn’t decide where to put his hands. The door slid shut and locked behind them. The only sound was four new thermal clips being loaded into four different guns. 

“So,” said Garrus. He let his voice go slow and cold. “You brought a _friend_ over.” Butler glanced away, and Garrus turned his attention to the turian. “Sorry about the mess. If I’d known you were coming, I’d have cleaned up.” 

Shepard snickered. 

The turian looked around, marking each point where a squad member crouched, sights locked. Garrus was reluctantly impressed. There was a tactical mind somewhere inside that head. 

“Name?” The newcomer met his gaze and straightened when he read Garrus’ markings. He could almost see the calculations going on in the turian’s head. 

“Lantar Sidonis,” the turian answered. The last name and the facial markings didn’t pull up any memories, but that meant nothing when turians were so scattered. “I’m a big fan, Archangel. You’re the only one on this shithole with the right idea. And I want to help.” 

Weaver snorted. “What makes you think you’re good enough?” she asked, every syllable a challenge. 

“What makes you think we’re gonna let you live?” Melanis said, right on the heels of Weaver’s sentence. She stayed on the stairs, her pistol never wavering. 

Garrus wanted to turn and look at Shepard, to see if her face gave him any clue as to how he should proceed, but it’d be crazy to try. He rolled his shoulders and gave Sidonis a measuring look. 

“Who was it?” 

Sidonis went very still. “Who was what?” 

Garrus tried not to grin. He’d made a gamble, but it had been the right one. “Who did the mercs take out? No one’s here just because they want to clean up. They’re here for payback.” 

“Everyone except you, Garrus,” whispered Shepard.

Sidonis stood even straighter. “My brother,” he said. “Eclipse bitches. Sorry,” he said. Melanis shrugged. “I want to help,” he repeated. “And I’m pretty good with a shotgun. You could use me.” 

Garrus thought about it. They could always use someone else. They were just one team against all the cruelty of Omega. And Butler had some of the best survival instincts -- bar fights aside -- that he’d ever seen. If Sidonis hadn’t tripped any alarms, then it was worth a trial run. 

He wished Shepard would say something. As hard as he’d tried, he hadn’t quite been able to break the habit of looking to her for approval. 

_It’s all on me now,_ he thought. _I’m the boss. I’m Archangel. The chain of command...is me._

“Fine,” said Garrus. “You’re in. For now.” 

Sidonis seemed to accept that. He grinned. Garrus felt a surge of homesickness. It had been a long time since he’d seen another turian smile. “Where should I throw my gear?” 

“I’ll show ye,” Butler said hurriedly, and lead Sidonis past the rest of the squad with an apologetic, relieved glance at Garrus. 

“Butler,” Garrus called after him. “We’ll talk about your unique recruitment methods later.” 

“Yeah, boss,” said Butler. The rest of the squad relaxed and headed back to their stations or bunks. 

Garrus rolled his shoulders to let the last of his tension ease away, and realized Shepard’s hand was in his, squeezing so tightly it hurt.


	4. Chapter 4

Later, much later, Garrus admitted to himself he'd have made the same call as Butler if he had been the one to meet Sidonis in the bar. While his hand-to-hand wasn’t near Garrus’ or Butler’s level, he was much better at talking his way out of potential trouble.

And he could stand toe-to-toe with a krogan and not flinch. Always a plus when they went up against the Blood Pack.

Sidonis won Weaver over in the time it took to compliment her latest mods, which in turn had won over Sensat and Grundan. Garrus was sure there was more to that odd triad than he knew, but Shepard wasn’t giving anything away. 

“Ask them if you’re so curious,” she said. They were at the foot of the bridge, four hours away from what counted as _dawn_ on Omega. “I’m not spilling any secrets.”

Garrus always took the pre-dawn watches. It was the only way he was guaranteed privacy with Shepard. Even if she was out on one of her scouts through Omega, she always swung through for a few quiet words.

They stood with their arms touching. Every few words, their hands would brush and linger. Her skin was a few degrees cooler than his. 

“All you do is spill secrets,” he said. Shepard elbowed him in the side. 

“Merc secrets don’t count.”

“Ah, my mistake.” He glanced over the bridge in time to see a pyjak dash across. Shepard saw it too.

“Get it!” she hissed. A half-second later, there was a shot, a squeal, and a limp-limbed body hit the wall.

“I didn’t have to use my scope,” Garrus grumbled. “Next time, give me something hard.” 

“Oh, Garrus, you have no idea what you just started.” Shepard bent at the waist and scooped up a bottle. “I played softball for ten years as a kid. Pitched half a season of no-hitters.” 

“I don’t understand what you just said, but maybe you should stop talking and _throw_.” 

Shepard got the bullish look she always did when someone told her she couldn’t do something -- it came out a lot around Udina -- and whipped the bottle down the bridge. It whistled through the air until Garrus shattered it. 

“You got lucky,” she said. 

“Hey boss? Everything all right down there?”

Garrus saw the moment Shepard remembered no one could see her. The way her face went hard made his tongue curl. He didn’t reply until Sidonis called out again. 

“Boss? You good?” 

“I’m good,” Garrus called back.

There was no reply. A few minutes later, the door to the base opened and Sidonis stepped out.

“Can’t sleep? Me neither.” Sidonis’ eyes roved over the bridge and fell on the dead pyjak. He gave Garrus an unimpressed look. 

“Do we have to worry about pyjak mercs now? Or is Eclipse just low on recruits?”

Shepard laughed. Garrus caught himself before he turned to smile at her.

“Just keeping my skills sharp.”. Sidonis huffed. 

“Like you’d have any problems with that.” Sidonis crossed his arms and stared out across the bridge. “So what was it like?”

Something in his voice warned Garrus. He managed not to flinch. “What was what like?” 

Sidonis huffed again. “Serving with Commander Shepard. The first human Spectre. Savior of the Citadel.” He gave Garrus a wry smile. “The whole squad wants to know, but they don’t want to ask because...well, you know.” 

Air rushed to fill the space Shepard had abandoned. 

Sidonis waited for his answer. Garrus’ voice fought its way past the knot in his chest.

“It was eye-opening,” he said. “Working with humans, serving under one -- never thought I’d end up in that situation.”

“You didn’t just serve with humans. Wasn’t there a quarian hanging around? And a krogan?”

“And an asari,” said Garrus. A swell of longing rushed over him: for Wrex’s grousing about food, for the crackle of Tali’s voice behind her mask and the way Liara clasped her hands when she got excited. “They were...good teammates.”

_They were my family._

Sidonis made a thoughtful noise and turned back to watch the bridge. “What was she like?”

“She -- she was brave, by any standards. And loyal. Smart.” Garrus reminded himself to answer in the past tense. “She was my friend.” He couldn’t bring himself to say more.

Sidonis hummed with both larynxes. “There still aren’t a lot of humans who would say that about a turian. That they were friends.”

“Shepard wasn’t like most humans. She was --” He couldn’t chose a word. “There won’t be anyone else like her.”

Sidonis stayed quiet.

 _Smart_ , thought Garrus. _Very smart._

***

Garrus stumbled into his room. He and Sidonis had stayed down in the common room after the rest of the squad hit their bunks, drinking and comparing notes on their civil service days. Shepard watched from the chair he’d come to think of as hers.

“You like him.”

“Hrm?” He turned his back as he stripped down to his undersuit.

“Sidonis. Your bosom buddy.”

“I’m going to ignore how that translated.”

Shepard kicked her legs out in front of her and crossed her arms. He recognized her pose; she would wait him out to get the answers she wanted. Best to give in now and save himself the humiliation of defeat.

“It’s good to have another turian around. Someone who knows about home, about -- well, about being turian. The rest of the squad, I trust them with my life, but --” He stopped, unsure of how to go on.

“But you don’t have to worry about him missing some crucial subvocal or puking if he eats your food by accident.”

Garrus crawled into bed. “Right. It’s reassuring. I’m used to working with non-turians from the Normandy, but there’s something about having another turian around.”

It was a sign of how far they’d come that neither of them winced when he said _Normandy_.

“I’m envious,” she said out of nowhere.

Garrus froze with his hand on the light. “Envious?”

“Yeah.” She ran a hand through her hair. “It’s stupid, but I miss going out with everyone. Drinking shitty beer, people-watching, just hanging out. Like I did before _this_. I’d even take a night out at Chora’s Den if it meant --”

He rolled on his side to see her face, but she turned away. He only saw the bright sweep of her hair.

“You didn’t come with me tonight?” She shook her head.

“I figured you’d want a night without me in your periphery. You know, turians-only. Ghost-free. 

Garrus frowned. “I like it when I know you’re there,” he said slowly. Shepard half-laughed, her head thrown back, the column of her neck exposed.

“I hate this,” she said, her voice suddenly rough. “I hate being dead.”

After a long, shuddering silence, Shepard kept talking.

“I just feel _useless_. Yeah, I got you out before the Blood Pack got there. Now what? I just lurk around Omega, listening for anything that can help you. I need my own fight. I’m nothing without it.”

“Shepard,” Garrus said in a careful voice. “You’re helping me.”

“Bullshit,” she retorted flatly. “You don’t need me. You’ve got a squad now. They look up to you. It’s -- it’s amazing, Garrus. When you came here, I thought you’d broken.” She gave him a weak smile. “I thought you’d get shot soon as you could. I’m sorry for doubting you. You were a mess, but you pulled it together.”

He laid his arm over his eyes. “I came here because it seemed like the only thing left. I couldn’t fight the Reapers, but I could fight here. That’s about as much thought as I gave it.” 

“Now you’ve got an eleven-man army and a ghost mascot. Things turned out pretty well.” She picked at her sleeve. “I’m so used to fighting and now I can’t. It’s like I don’t know what to do without a gun in my hand.” Shepard rubbed her eyes. Garrus saw, with something like horror, that she was almost crying. “Who am I if I can’t fight?” 

In the whole fight against Saren, even after Ash died, he’d never seen Shepard like this. Every blow strengthened her resolve, made her push forward harder and faster. She’d been grim but unbeaten. Now she had nothing to lose by being honest.

He wondered if she hurt this badly when she was alive and hated himself for never asking.

He dropped his arm to his side and stared at her until she looked at him. Then he spoke.

“You aren’t just your battles,” he began. Shepard made that broken laugh again, but didn’t look away.

“I’m a soldier, Garrus. That’s all I know.”

“I know you’re more,” he told her. “Dead or not, you’re the best friend I’ve ever had. My squad is my family, but I couldn’t do this without you.”

She wrapped her arms around her chest. In the dim light, she looked very young and very tired.

“Thank you,” she said, so sincere he had to look away. After a moment, he held out his hand. She took it and traced his face with her eyes.

Some things were too large for words. And this, whatever it was and however strange, was just beginning. But he could ask.

“Stay tonight?”

She squeezed his hand. 

*** 

“Hey boss?”

“Hey Weaver?”

“Finished that bypass I told you about.” Weaver bounced on her heels while Garrus looked over the mods. “People are salty about these new security upgrades, let me tell you. Bye bye omni-gel.” 

“But let me guess, once we apply these to our omni-tools...” 

Weaver beamed. “Won’t be a door on the station that can keep us out for long.” Her smile faded. “Well, until the next round of upgrades comes out, and then I’ll have to patch the mods. But until then, we’re ahead of the game. Sorry it’s not permanent.” She stopped bouncing and knotted her fingers together.

Not for the first time, Garrus wondered how much Weaver’s resemblance to Tali was what convinced him to let her stay.

“It’s fine. I want these mods applied to the squad’s omni-tools before the next patrol. Can you do that?”

She nodded. “Oh sure! Sensat and Grundan already had theirs upgraded. They’re my guinea pigs.” 

“Of course they are,” Shepard said from her chair. She was in a surprisingly good mood.

Garrus ignored her. “Nice work, Weaver.”

Weaver beamed. “Thanks, boss.” She was halfway out the door when Garrus called her back. 

“You mind if I ask you a question, Weaver?”

She shrugged. “Nope. Hit me, boss.” 

“It’s none of my business, but...” 

“Here it comes,” said Shepard. “Weaver better watch out. Garrus Vakarian is on the case.” 

He resisted the urge to give her a shove. 

“...but what’s your story? You seem pretty close to --” 

“Oh, that?” Weaver interrupted. “Yeah, I figured you’d ask. It looked weird finding us all together, I bet. Well, it’s nothing sexy, if that’s what you were wondering.” 

“I bet you were, Garrus,” whispered Shepard. “Sexy, sexy thoughts about Grundan and Sensat. Is that what keeps you warm at night?” 

“We all came to Omega on the same shuttle,” Weaver said, blithely unaware of the ghost whispering behind Garrus. “Then we all ended up in the same apartment block. Turns out we like tech. And guns.” She gave him a wide smile, her sharp face lit from within. “When we’re done here, we’re gonna go to the Citadel. Gonna open a store. I’ll design the mods and the guys’ll demo them.” She sighed happily. “It’s gonna be great. But only when we’re done here. Don’t worry, boss. We’re all here, one hundred percent.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he said. “Thanks for taking the time, Weaver.” 

“Hey, no problem, boss. Okay, gotta get these mods in.” 

Garrus waited until Weaver’s footsteps faded, then twisted to glare at Shepard. She leaned back in her chair and gave him an innocent look. 

“What? No judgment if that’s what gets your motor running, Garrus.” She crossed her legs. “What _does_ get Archangel go- oh please, stop trying to melt me with your laser eyes. It doesn’t work.” 

“If only it did, then I’d have wrapped things up here months ago.” As hard as he tried, he couldn’t quite keep the frustration out of his voice. They were six months in and the fight never paused. He was getting tired. 

She reached out, suddenly serious, and ran her hand down the length of his arm. “It’ll get done, Garrus,” she said, and twined her fingers with his. He took a deep breath and focused on how to fit their hands together. 

*** 

Shepard had been gone for two days. Not that Garrus counted the hours.

Sidonis was on guard duty with Erash. Everyone else was sleeping when she came back, appearing in front of him without a sigh to signal her approach. 

“I went to see my mom.” 

Garrus let his datapad clatter to his desk. “You what?” 

“Yeah. She’s good. Sad, but she’s...okay. Dating some new guy, joined a _book club_.” Shepard started to pace his room: seven steps forward, seven steps back. 

“I -- that’s wonderful.” He knew she went to see the others periodically, more from context clues than anything she directly admitted, but she came back from those visits quiet and relieved. Now she radiated tension, her eyes were red. “Wait. Have you been crying?” 

“Oh, very smooth, Garrus, thanks for sparing my feelings,” Shepard snapped. “You know I can still feel things, right? Like pain? So if I do this --” she yanked on her hair “-- it hurts.” 

He stood up so fast he knocked his chair over. When he reached for her, Shepard knocked his hands away. 

“I never really thought about it but I assumed being dead meant things wouldn’t hurt anymore. Losing Ash, Akuze -- none of it would matter. Joke’s on me though, because it all hurts like hell.”

Garrus waited until she stopped pacing. The next time he reached for her, Shepard let him put his hands on her shoulders. 

“Shepard, talk to me.”

She took a long moment to compose herself, eyes closed, with deep breaths. Her eyelashes were wet and clumped together when she looked up. 

“When I saw my mom, she had this picture of me out, and she had this...candle in front of it. Mom was never really sentimental, but the candle --” She covered her mouth. “It’s my birthday, Garrus.” 

He couldn’t think of anything to say. 

“I was going to be thirty,” she said, and the bewildered way she shaped the words, like she still couldn’t believe she was never getting any older, was more than he could stand. Garrus pulled her close.

Shepard called his name. Her voice was muffled.

“Garrus?”

Her head was tucked under his chin, his hand cradled her skull. Her voice was muffled because her mouth was pressed to the side of his neck. Garrus could feel her lips move against his skin. He let her go with a guilty smile.

“I think that’s why no one wants to hug turians,” he said. “We’re terrible at it.”

Shepard swiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Gold star for effort.” She laughed, a little shaky. “Sorry for just... I don’t know, freaking out on you like that. It still hits me at weird times.”

“Don’t apologize,” he said. “I’m sorry I don’t know how to help.” 

“You do,” Shepard said fiercely. “God, you think I’m a mess now? Imagine me if I hadn’t found you. No me without you, Garrus.”

The air left his lungs like it had been kicked out of him. “You don’t mean that.” 

“Oh, I do.” She touched his face. He startled when her fingertips brushed his markings, cool and smooth. “Garrus, I want you to know --” 

“Boss!” Sidonis’ footsteps pounded up the stairs and Shepard jumped away from Garrus like she’d been burned. “Boss, picking up an Eclipse transmission -- they’ve boarded an aid ship.” Garrus bared his teeth. Every other month, some well-intentioned ship of idiots docked at Omega, ready to bring salvation. Too bad they never brought guns. The squad’s room echoed with yells.

Garrus glanced at Shepard. She gave him a sharp nod.

“I’ll be right behind you,” she said. Without letting himself think about it too hard, he passed his hand over her hair, wishing he’d left his gloves off.

“Suit up!” he shouted. “We move in five.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

It started going wrong when Melanis came out of cover a second too soon.

“Shit!” She stumbled back with a hand against her stomach. “Shit, shit, _shit!_ ”

“Erash!” Garrus roared over the clatter of rifle fire.

“On it, boss!” From the corner of his eye, Garrus saw an Eclipse engineer lean out of cover, shotgun pointed at Erash’s back as the salarian knelt over Melanis. “Sidonis, cover him!”

Sidonis took a running leap out of cover, switching out thermal clips as he moved, and his first shot caught the engineer in the gut. The man howled and went to his knees, and Sidonis unloaded another two blasts into his face.

“Dropped him!”

There wasn’t time to spare to give Sidonis a nod. Garrus peered around the edge of the crate and scanned the field.

“I count thirty left, give or take,” Shepard hissed at his side. “They’re coming from those two hallways, twelve o’clock and nine o’clock. No sign of mechs yet.” Garrus nodded, eyes ahead.

“Erash! How’s Melanis?”

“Medi-gel deployed. She’s stable.”

“Why is it Mie and I are always the ones bleeding out?” groaned Melanis. “Starting to regret signing up, boss.”

“Just startin’?” bellowed Butler. He spun out of cover and raked SMG fire across two vanguards who looked like they were ready to charge. “I knew this was a bad idea from the beginnin’!”

“So why you’d sign up?” Weaver shouted over the comms.

“Not smart enough t’ resist a fight -- heads up, engineers incomin’!”

Garrus heard Weaver’s dry chuckle and felt a spark of pity for the mercs. “I got this,” she said. “Deploying combat drone! 

A short burst of blue light flared to the squad’s left. The drone shot over their heads silently -- one of Weaver’s proudest moments had been designing a combat drone that didn’t make that noise -- and dropped into the center of the mercs.

“And three -- two -- one -- cover your eyes!” Weaver screamed.

Nothing happened.

Garrus felt a cold trickle of dread start at the base of his spine. “Weaver,” he said calmly. “I hope you’ve got more than some pretty lights for Eclipse.”

“Oh god, fuck, sorry. They’re trying to jam me. Rerouting systems.”

“Just get it done, Weaver. Getting a little hairy down here. Mierin, make sure she has some breathing room.”

“Got it, boss.” There was a blister of sniper rifle fire above their heads, and two vanguards went down. “Switching to biotics, stand by for Singularity.”

The sisters had learned to announce themselves whenever they used biotics; their powers were a liability if team members ran into the Stasis field meant for a merc. Garrus counted to five before he heard the steady _thwoom_ of the Singularity blossoming a few feet away.

“Thank the Maker for blue warrior goddesses,” said Ripper.

“On behalf of a blue warrior goddess, you’re welcome,” grunted Melanis.

Garrus eased out of cover. The engineers and an unlucky vanguard hovered three feet off the ground, limbs waving like they were trapped underwater. He took a breath and lined up his first shot.

Five headshots in seven seconds. When he crouched down, Shepard was at his side, eyes hard.

“If you’re going to pull out, Garrus, now’s the time,” said Shepard. “They’ve pulled off the aid ship and the crew is safe. Eclipse is down to half strength, but their engineers are prepping something big.”

“Boss?” Weaver broke in. “Drone firewalls in place. Ready to deploy on your orders.”

Leaving the Eclipse in this district at half strength was a victory, but breaking them completely was a crushing blow he couldn’t resist. “Erash, is Melanis stable?”

“Yes, but I don’t recommend we linger.”

“I’m fine,” snapped Melanis. “We can take them out, boss.”

“Garrus,” said Shepard. “You may not get another chance to pull back.”

“Weaver, get ready to deploy on my mark. Sidonis, Ripper, I want you on our flanks. Anyone gets ideas, blow them apart." 

“Garrus.” Shepard said. “Trust me. Pull back now.” 

“Sensat, take point. Butler, Grundan --”

“On it, boss.”

Garrus glanced to his side. Shepard met his eyes without expression.

“Weaver -- on my mark. _Mark_.”

“Combat drone deployed. Cover your eyes in three -- two -- one.”

The white starburst seared through his eyelids. The combat drone was a mobile flashbang grenade, and it was effective. Very effective.

...against enemies who weren’t sending in the mechs.

***

“LOKI mechs incoming!” Mierin’s voice wavered through a burst of static. “Weaver’s detecting jamming tech, they’re trying to block our --” The static rattled over her voice, and the comms went dead.

“Fuck!” yelled Sidonis. “Boss, we’ve got waves of mechs approaching on either side.”

Garrus jerked his head at Sensat. In unison, they leaned out of cover long enough to deploy Overload. There was an answering burst from overhead as Weaver echoed them.

“Mechs closing!” growled Grundan. Garrus switched to his assault rifle and shoved to his feet. Most of the mechs were down, shattered and twitching, but a handful were still approaching. 

No time for regret, no time for should-haves. He had enough time to line up a shot, blink and drop back down behind cover. The ground rumbled, and he heard the heavy cough of an YMIR’s guns. It was aiming over their heads, right at the window where Weaver and Mierin were hidden.

Butler let out a roar. “Heavy mech closin’!” He dug into a side pouch and primed a grenade. “Frag out!”

Garrus waited for the explosion. The floor shifted and for a horrible, unending second, he thought the crate between him and the mercs was about to fall. At the last moment, it righted itself and he leaned back against it. He risked a glance around, but Shepard was gone.

The distant snap-crack of Mierin’s Mantis yanked him back. Relief crashed into him: Weaver and Mierin were still in the fight. But now the YMIR was focused on them, and there were still the rest of the LOKIs to deal with.

“Boss! Boss, I got through, the hack won’t hold long but we’re here.” Weaver sounded, insanely, like she was having the time of her life.

“Pull back!” Garrus yelled over the gunfire. “I’m sending Erash and Melanis out. I want you to cover them -- get a drone behind you.”

Mierin squawked a protest that cut out in another burst of static. Garrus thought they had lost comms again, and Weaver’s reply was almost buried by the sound of the YMIR’s footsteps. “Now! Go!”

“Copy that, boss. On the move.”

“I want covering fire -- once Erash and Melanis are clear, we’re pulling out!” _Should have listened, Shepard_ , he let himself think, and turned to blast open another LOKI’s chest.

“Boss, we’re clear,” Erash radioed. “Heading back to base via path 0103. See you there.”

“Copy that. See you there. Sidonis, watch your flank!”

Sidonis pivoted smoothly on his heel and braced his shoulder against a pillar. The shotgun blast caught the LOKI in the head, and it tumbled to the ground only three feet from Garrus. He heard the beeps -- just in time to know he couldn’t move quickly enough.

The explosion of the mech blew apart the crate. His armor caught the worst of the blast, but enough pieces buried themselves in his neck and fringe to make every movement agony.

“ _Garrus!_ ” Shepard appeared in his vision, face white under her freckles. She reached out to him. He tried to catch her hands but his balance was off and he kept missing.

“I’m fine,” he told her. His blood coated his armor and the ground around him.

 _Looks worse than it is, Shepard, neck wounds always bleed a lot but this isn’t bad, not deep at all._ He tried to shape the words, but Shepard wasn’t looking at him. Butler knelt next to him, already slicking medi-gel over his neck. Garrus tried again -- Shepard had to know he was fine -- but the numbness crept into his tongue and stopped the words in his mouth.

She wasn’t looking at him. She was watching the YMIR, fists clenched and jaw set.

_You’re not joining me. I won’t let it happen._

“No, no,” he groaned, and tried to sit up. Butler pushed him back down.

“Sh --” he managed to say, but she was gone.

Garrus closed his eyes. It was getting quiet. He couldn’t hear the mechs anymore.

***

The next few hours were a little hazy, more from Butler’s heavy hand with the medi-gel than his actual injuries. By the time they all -- all of them -- made it back to base, Garrus’ injuries were mostly healed and all he had left was a headache. That was thanks to Sidonis’ constant apologies.

“For the last time,” Garrus sighed. “Shut up, Sidonis.”

“Boss, I --”

“For Spirits’ sake, Sensat, get him out of here and put him to work, or I’m going to tear off his fringe.”

“Wow, you’re moody when you’re hurt,” said Weaver from the doorway. She and Grundan moved aside to let Sensat and Sidonis out. “Remind me never to shoot you in the face, boss.”

“I didn’t shoot him!” wailed Sidonis. “It was an accident, I’m sorry --” A door mercifully slammed shut between him and Garrus. Weaver hid a laugh behind her hand. Garrus flexed his mandibles at her.

“Erash says I missed a party,” she said. “You got blown up. Butler was about to hit the YMIR with another grenade to get you out when all the mechs just -- stopped. Like, just dropped where they were standing. How’d you do it? Semi-localized EMP? Scrambled Overload to diffuse over a wider radius?”

“I was too busy bleeding to notice,” Garrus answered. “Sorry to disappoint.” Weaver looked heartbroken.

“No one can tell me what happened,” she pouted. Garrus groaned.

“Why are you still here? Don’t you have some tech to mangle?” Weaver shrugged.

“Erash is using my work bench to finish patching up Melanis.” She frowned. “If he gets blood all over my gear, I’ll kill him.”

Garrus swallowed and grimaced. His neck ached. “Better go check.”

Weaver rolled her eyes. “I can take a hint, boss. Holler if you need us. I promise not to let them send Sidonis.” She shut the door on her way out. Garrus adjusted his pillows to support his carapace and stared at the ceiling.

“You were right.” She didn’t say anything. “Now’s the time for the _I told you so’s_ that you humans are so fond of.”

He turned to look at Shepard’s chair when she still wouldn’t reply.

It had been empty for the last four hours.


	6. Chapter 6

 

“I gave them the week off, Shepard,” said Garrus. “Melanis is going to be out for a few days, and we’re -- I’m a little rattled. Need to rest before we go back out there.” He pushed his datapad aside. “Maybe they’ll think we gave up. Or got killed. Big surprise when we come back, right? Till then, it’s just general patrols.”

Monteague stopped outside his door. “Who the fuck are you talking to, boss?” he asked cheerfully.

“Just thinking out loud, Monteague.” Garrus braced his hand on his desk and turned around. “You’re not on patrol for the next two days. What are you hanging around for?”

“Oh, just grabbing my gear before Ripper and I take Sidonis to the shooting range. Got a bet going -- three hundred credits says Ripper’s a better shot than Sidonis.” He waggled his eyebrows at Garrus. “Want in, boss? Good way to get revenge for the whole shrapnel thing.”

“Ah, thanks, but duty calls.” He gestured vaguely at the datapads littering his desk.

“You got shot to shit two days ago and you’re still working?” Monteague whistled. “Well, if you change your mind and want to watch me relieve Sidonis of some credits, you know where to find us.” He sketched a salute and headed down the hall while Garrus waited for his heart to stop pounding.

He was getting careless if his squad could catch him talking to Shepard.

“Too close,” he said. “I’ll have to be quieter.”

Shepard didn’t answer. She’d been gone for twenty-seven hours.

***

“Boss! Hey, hey boss!”

Garrus looked up. Weaver beamed at him from his door, Melanis at her side. Something dark and foul-smelling covered Weaver’s hands.

“Butler’s taking me and Sensat and Grundan and the sisters home for dinner. He said that you should come because Nalah worked with turians so she can cook dextro.”

“Any reason why Butler didn’t come to invite me himself?”

“He said we were cuter, so we’d be better at convincing you.” Weaver’s grin got even wider. “He’s totally right, you know.”

“Half right. You go on ahead. Thank Nalah for me, I’ve got work here.”

Weaver glanced at Melanis. She shrugged. Garrus pretended not to notice.

“Are you sure, boss? You’re the only one who hasn’t gone anywhere except for patrols...”

“Weaver --”

“I know, I know, not my business, but you’re not turning into like, a creepy hermit, are you?”

Garrus gave her a baleful look. Weaver stepped back, hands up and palm-out.

“Point taken, we’re leaving. Sorry for bugging you.” Melanis disappeared down the hall, Weaver on her heels.

“It’s fine. Tell Butler his concern is appreciated, but his tactics were a little obvious.” If Weaver heard the rest of his sentence, she didn’t respond. “And wash your hands!” he yelled as an afterthought.

_You’re not her father, Garrus, but you sure as hell sound like you are._

“You used to sound like that around Tali,” he said. “It’s hard not to. She’s young.”

_The first time we saw Tali, she was blowing up mercs._

“And Weaver can hack any system you put in front of her.” He pulled off his visor and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Where the hell are you, Shepard?”

“Garrus?”

He jumped. Sidonis stared guiltily at him from the doorway.

“I, uh, I was just going to my bunk and I heard you talking. Everything all right?”

“I’m fine, Sidonis.”

“Talking to yourself is generally a sign of insanity,” said Sidonis. He tried for levity and missed it by a few kilometers. Garrus forced himself to look up.

“Whoa, your face,” Sidonis shrank back. “I mean -- I’ve never seen you without your visor. The squad took bets on it. Vortash says you sleep with it on.”

The urge to bury his head in his hands was overwhelming. Seventy-four hours, and Shepard was still gone.

“Look, I know you already chased Weaver out of here, but she had a point. You’ve been here or on patrol since the Eclipse fight. It’s...weird.” Garrus heard the hum of embarrassment rise and fall under Sidonis’ words. If Sidonis moved closer, he’d be able to smell the embarrassment too.

“Not a very turian response to a superior’s behavior, Sidonis. Since when do you call me Garrus?”

“We’re both terrible turians, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Sidonis nodded at Shepard’s chair. “Can I?”

Garrus nodded and tried to ignore how final it felt to see someone other than Shepard take her seat. Sidonis, at least, had the good grace to look uncomfortable.

“It’s not my place, but it seems like you’re carrying around a lot of --”

“You’re right,” Garrus bit out. “It’s not your place, and if you’re about to say what I think you are, reconsider.”

“You were talking to her,” said Sidonis. “To Shepard. You asked her where she was.”

_“Sidonis.”_

“I did the same thing when my brother died.” Garrus froze. Sidonis stared at a stain on the floor. “For months. It got so I thought he’d actually talk back. He never did. I had to make myself stop after a while, because waiting to hear him was...once someone’s gone, they’re gone.”

“You’re not telling me anything new.”

“I know I’m not. I’m just trying to tell you that it’s not surprising. But don’t stay in one place and hope they’ll show up.” Sidonis finally looked up and gave Garrus the saddest smile he’d ever seen. “Take it from me, it’s a waste of time.”

Garrus waited for something to say, but nothing came. He nodded. Sidonis pushed himself out of Shepard’s chair.

“Now that I’ve overshared, I’m going. Monteague cleaned me out, so it’s the shittiest booze in the shittiest dive for me. And don’t worry. I know better than to ask if you want to come.”

He left Garrus to stare at Shepard’s chair.

Seventy-five hours.

***

“You’re starting to worry me. I have a policy against worrying about you, but that’s when I can see you and know you’re about to lay waste to everyone in your way. Right now? Right now I can’t see you, Shepard.”

Garrus spoke into the curve of his arm, as quietly as he could. One hundred thirty four hours had gone by. He’d spent the last three of them in bed, trying to sleep and failing. In seven hours, the squad would wake up and start planning their next steps.

And Shepard would not be back.

One hundred thirty four hours, three minutes.

He pulled off his visor.

“Do you want an apology for not listening to you?”

Silence.

“Dammit, Shepard.” He kicked off his covers. “Where are you? Did you _leave_?”

“Not willingly.”

Shepard stood in the middle of his room, smiling at him with dull eyes.

“Shepard, Spirits!” Her gaze locked on his face. The skin around her eyes and mouth was white and cold.

“Hey, Garrus.” Her smile twitched and shuddered away. “Did I wake you?”

There was nothing right about this. Shepard was supposed to come back and yell at him for risking his squad. She was supposed to tell him what he did wrong. She wasn’t supposed to come back with half-vacant eyes and no color in her face.

“Shepard, where did you --” He couldn’t finish the sentence. She blinked at him and tried the smile again.

“Where did I go?” She made a vague gesture with her hands. “Over the hills and far away.”

He pushed out of bed when Shepard swayed. The moment before he touched her arm, Shepard’s eyes snapped up to his face. Her mouth twisted, her fingers bent into hooks. Garrus felt an absurd, powerful relief when she rounded on him

“You idiot,” she spat.

Garrus’ hands dropped to his sides.

“You had the chance to get out, and you didn’t take it. Your squad could have died and you just had to keep fighting. Damn turian honor, can’t let anyone see your back until you’re _dead_. Good thing you had me around so nobody _living_ had to pay for your screw-up.”

He had been ready for her to be angry, but not bitter and riding rough-shod over all his self-doubt. Shepard had never been one to personalize criticism before, but she’d never been so brittle and uncontrolled either. Wherever she had been --

Garrus stopped himself before he could imagine it.

“It’s not about honor,” he tried to protest, but she cut him off with a slash of her arm.

“I don’t care what it’s about. This isn’t the first time someone ignored me when I said it was time to go. And we all know what happened on Akuze.”

 _Spirits_.

Shepard's mouth twisted, hot fury in every line of her face, but when she tried to speak, nothing came out but a bleak, high whine. She slumped down, all the strings cut, and her anger went out like a candle flame crushed between two fingers.

“Akuze,” she murmured. “I didn’t see them while I was gone.” She laughed, a sound too bright for the empty look on her face. “Glad I didn’t.”

“Hey,” Garrus choked out and closed the distance between them. She made a tiny noise when he touched her face and lifted her chin. He kept his touch light, ready to back away if her anger flared again, but she leaned toward him instead. When a minute passed and she didn’t pull away, Garrus traced the scar at her mouth with his thumb.

A shiver rippled through her. “Yes,” she said. “Don’t stop. Makes it easier to find the way.”

Her skin was clammy under his palms. She leaned forward until her entire weight rested against him. Her hands slid up to link behind his neck.

“Was I gone long?” He swallowed.

“Five days, give or take,” he said, because it was better than saying _one hundred thirty four hours, ten minutes, and I felt them all_. Shepard shivered again.

“It felt a lot longer,” she sighed, shallow and thin. “I didn’t want to leave, Garrus. I can promise you that. I couldn’t help it.” She lifted her head. “I got out as soon as I could.”

He stared at the still-white skin around her eyes and thought, Not soon enough.

***

Nothing in Garrus’ experience gave him any idea how to proceed. Shepard seemed content to lean against him and let his warmth seep into her. The cool, soft line of her body curved against his, and he was glad that his armor was stacked in its case.

“Shepard --”

She hummed with her cheek pressed against his carapace.

“Shepard, how --” Garrus felt her wince.

 _Don’t ask me how._ How _hurts too much._

“Forget I asked,” he said. “What can I do?”

“At the risk of sounding painfully melodramatic, just holding me is fine.” She stepped away, her hands sliding reluctantly over his cowl. “But I understand if you want to sleep.”

“Well.” He coughed, and she raised an eyebrow. The thought of the past five days weighed on him, and he took a leap. “At the risk of sounding like a bad vid, the bed is big enough for two.”

Garrus let the thin web of implications hang in the air. Time to see if they were strong enough to support themselves. After a moment’s thought, Shepard nodded.

“Okay. Bed.”

Neither of them moved.  

“You first,” she said. “It’s your bed, after all.” When she tried to smile, it looked almost normal. Her lips were chapped and bloodless, but something sparked in her eyes, like an internal engine restarting. Every moment he watched, she looked more like herself and less like --

_Don’t say it, not even in your own head._

He closed his hands around Shepard’s wrists and pulled her after him. They stumbled and fell together, with Garrus landing on his back and Shepard sprawled on top of him. She rolled on her side, her back against the wall. Her hand brushed his waist on the way to his cowl, and his eyes fluttered closed for a heartbeat.

“You’re warm,” she said, and pressed closer. “So warm. I thought I wouldn’t be warm again.”

Even through her clothes, Garrus felt the chill that had settled on her like a second skin. She had no smell at all, not even metal or sweat. He ran a hand down her forearm.

“I have a theory about all this,” Shepard murmured, but didn’t elaborate. He gave in to temptation and tucked her hair behind her ear.

“Theory?”

“Mhm.”

Silence swallowed them whole, warm and peaceful.

Garrus didn’t know how he should feel with Shepard’s body slowly warming against his. He was sure it wasn’t supposed to be mad exhilaration, every breath electric in his lungs.

“I think it’s you,” she said.

“You what -- me?” He tried to crane his head to look at Shepard, but all he saw were her fingertips trailing sweetly over the edge of his cowl.

“You’re the only who can see me or talk to me, Garrus. The day I died, the first place I ended up was in your apartment. If there’s a reason why I came back, I don’t know what it is. But I know that when I’m near you, I’m closer to how I was.” Shepard made a disgusted noise and twisted her fingers in her hair. “God. I’m terrible at explaining this. Too bad there isn’t a beacon that can just zap the answer into my head.”

“Because that worked out so well before.” As hard as he tried, Garrus couldn’t keep the pleased thrum out of his voice. It buzzed in his chest and filled the air around them, even after his words were gone. “Don’t do that again. Call it an order if that makes it easier.”

“Insubordinate.”

“Shepard.” She looked up, high rich color in her cheeks. “Please. I worry about you. That’s all I’m saying.”

Garrus braced himself for her standard deflection, and was completely unprepared when she pulled herself up by his shoulders and pressed her mouth to his.

She sighed into him, and for one second he felt the heat of her mouth, the warmest part of her body. Then she stiffened and pulled away, covering her mouth with a hand.

“Oh God, Garrus. I’m sorry, that was --”

His kiss was clumsy, more a bump than an actual kiss, but he knew, gut-deep, that this was the best way to reassure her. They were better with action than words. When she trembled and pushed against him, he closed his eyes and tried to remember to breathe.

***

Shepard was staring at him when he woke up. She turned away guiltily, but a smile tugged at her mouth.

“I can see that going from sweet to scary very quickly,” he told her.

She tried to hide her laugh in a pillow. “Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to creep you out.”

“I could get used to it.” After a moment’s pause, he cradled the back of her head in his hand and pressed their foreheads together. He lingered over the touch, long enough to feel Shepard sling an arm over his carapace.

“Let me guess, that’s a turian kiss.”

“Lucky guess. Or were your alien civ classes that much more thorough than mine?”

Shepard laughed again, and when he rumbled in response, she pressed the pads of her fingers to his neck. “Do that again,” she said. He rolled his eyes but obliged.

“Whoa.” Shepard blinked at him. “That’s... a lot more intense than I thought it would be. You really do have a whole sub-vocabulary with those, don’t you?”

Garrus let a long, rolling affirmative vibrate against her fingers.

“I take it that’s a yes?”

“Another lucky guess.”

“Such a smart ass.”

“Better than being a dumb ass, right?”

“You’re spending too much time around humans. You’re picking up on all our bad habits and terrible slang.” Shepard propped herself up on her elbow and trailed a finger over the edge of his mandible.

Garrus hummed with pleasure. If he never had to leave this bed again, he wouldn’t be sorry. “Not all your habits are terrible. There are a few I really like.”

“Oh yeah?” Shepard smirked at him. “Like wh--”

Kissing was going to be very useful.

***

The sounds of his squad hitting the showers and searching for breakfast reminded Garrus that there was a world outside his room, a world that badly needed Archangel and his talents. He sat up with a groan. Behind him, Shepard sighed and ran her hands through her hair. The silence was an expectant one, and Garrus knew Shepard was ready to tell him what had happened.

“I sabotaged the mechs,” Shepard said. Typical for Shepard, she didn’t waste time on an introduction. She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. “I knew you guys wouldn’t be able to get out before the YMIR got there. So I fried its friend/foe identifier. Reached right into its casing, like it wasn’t even there. And then I overloaded the LOKIs’ CPUs, same way. It worked, but I couldn’t hold on. I pushed too hard.”

“Because of me.”

“Because you made a bad call.” She turned on her side. “I’m still mad as hell at you. But if it comes down to it, I’d do the same thing again, Garrus.”

“Don’t.” Garrus felt cold. “These last five days -- what if you push yourself too far and you can’t come back?”

Shepard lifted her chin. “I’ll always come back, Garrus. Isn’t that obvious by now?”

“Don’t. No sabotaging mechs, no trying to attack someone because I got hit. I just -- have to be smarter.”

Shepard nodded and laid back, her hair fanning over the pillow. “So, you want me to stick around?”

The first and truest answer was _Yes, of course, I’m greedy_. He was trying to think of a more diplomatic way to phrase it when someone pounded on the door.

“Ready when you are, boss,” said Erash from the other side.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

The squad was ready to crawl back into bed at the slightest sign from Garrus. Mierin looked heartbroken when he came into the room in full armor.

“Careful, Garrus. It looks like they’ll mutiny if you try to make them work.” Shepard closed her hand around his wrist. “Shouldn’t have let them sit around for a week.” Through some weird emotional alchemy, Shepard had decided to transmute her anger into being a smart-ass. Garrus almost preferred her pissed-off.

“Look at you,” he said to the squad. “I don’t think I’ve seen anyone look more pathetic. It’s like you had your break taken _away_.”

“Screw you,” Weaver said cheerfully. She huddled over a steaming mug of coffee. “ _Boss_.”

A low wave of laughter moved through the squad, but when Garrus held up a hand, everyone went quiet.

“Show-off,” said Shepard. She sat down on a crate with her back against the wall. Garrus felt her gaze on the back of his head.

“I hope you all enjoyed the break,” he said. “Because it’s back to work, and don’t think for a second it’s going to get any easier. The mercs are mad now, and that’s just the trouble next door.”

“What do we have on deck, boss?” Sensat leaned forward. “Hitting Eclipse again?”

“Depends on how bad they’ve been.” Garrus nodded at Weaver. She dug under her leg for a datapad, then cleared her throat.

“Eclipse is laying low -- taking out their mechs was a big deal, and please tell me you’re gonna let me know how it happened, it’s almost my birthday -- and it’s just the usual bullshit from the Blood Pack. Garm’s making noises _again_ about pushing out Aria, but even he’s not stupid enough to actually try it. Blue Suns made a move on one of the clinics in the Gozu district, but the salarian in charge wiped out the scouting parties.” She tossed the datapad on the table. “All quiet on the merc front.”

Vortash snorted. “All that noise about how no system can keep you out, and that’s all you have for us? I could have just walked into Afterlife and figured it all out.”

“He has a point, Weaver,” said Garrus. “Anything else?”

“That’s just the merc news. Do you really think I’d show up with nothing else?” Weaver wrinkled her nose at Vortash. “I find your lack of faith... disturbing.”

All the humans, Shepard included, started to laugh. The non-humans traded indulgent looks. _Oh, our humans are being weird again._

“Since the merc channels were so boring, I did a couple sweeps through the off-station comm logs. Nothing too interesting -- well, Udina’s on Omega, getting his fill of slumming it for the month -- until yesterday, when I found this.” She pulled another datapad from under her leg and handed it to Garrus. While he read, Weaver turned to the rest of the squad.

“C-Sec’s been trying to track down an independent krogan slaver for three years. He deals mostly in children, stolen from Terminus colonies, but lately he’s been dipping into Citadel space too. He funnels them through the wards before selling them off. Kron Harga’s his name. And the terrifying icing on this nightmare cupcake is that he’s rumored to be a krogan biotic.” Sensat groaned with a fist pressed to his mouth.

“The biotic thing isn’t true,” said Ripper. Grundan nodded. “But he’s vicious enough as-is. Half the slaves don’t make it to the Citadel. And the ones that do? Jesus.” He shook his head.

“They’re better off dead,” Grundan muttered. “Slavery is salvation compared to what he does to them.”

Garrus’s hands tightened on the edge of the datapad. “He’s here,” he said. “On Omega. About to head out to hit another colony.”

 _This_ was why Garrus come to Omega. No red tape to hold him back, no regulations to stifle his creativity. Sooner or later, every criminal who’d ever slipped past him at C-Sec would wash up on Omega, and his finger would already be on the trigger.

Archangel would be ready. _They_ would be ready.

“Listen up!” The squad’s eyes snapped to him. “Kron’s going to have back-up, but they’re nothing to worry about. Mostly mechs and vorcha. Kron himself? He survived a full-on C-Sec raid, and took out twenty-three officers before they lost him in the wards.”

“Good thing we’re not C-Sec,” said Monteague. He cracked his knuckles. “What’s our plan, boss?”

“Yeah, boss,” said Shepard. “What’s our plan?”

***

He chose Sensat and Ripper for his squad, and Butler, Vortash, and Sidonis for the second. Monteague would come as support. He would hang back and patch up whichever squad wasn’t directly engaged with Kron.

“He regenerates like any other krogan, but he moves faster than most. The important thing is to keep him at a distance so he can’t charge while we take down his shields.”

“You don’t want us, boss?” Melanis picked at the remains of her breakfast. “Singularity could be useful.”

“I’m more concerned with his shields. Once they’re down, we can wear him out.” Melanis gave Garrus a steady look. He knew she needed more time before she was in top shape again, and she knew it too, but he wouldn’t say it in front of the squad. “You’re on home duty with Grundan.” The batarian tried not to look overjoyed and failed. “Erash, you’re in charge of the back-up squad. You’ll wait in D block until my word. Hopefully we won’t need _creative_ firepower, but if you’ve got any surprises, get them ready.” Erash and Weaver slid out of their seats and bent over Weaver’s workbench, sorting through piles of tech. Erash picked out a small sphere that glinted wickedly in the overhead lights, and Weaver nodded eagerly.

“I don’t think I want to know,” said Shepard, watching them. “Do you want me with you, Garrus?”

The answer was _yes, always_ , but after last night, the question was even more loaded. There was more between them now than a common fight -- a _more_ they hadn’t yet discussed or defined. Worrying about Shepard was only a disadvantage.

“I’ll watch the perimeter and point out strays,” she said. “No physical contact, not even if I’m in your immediate vicinity. I can move faster than anyone you’ve got, and a few seconds’ warning could be the only advantage you get.”

Garrus sighed. “Fine,” he murmured. “No heroics, or you’re off the squad.”

“Got it, boss.” Shepard grinned. “Ready when you are.”

***

Erash and Weaver weren’t the only ones with a creative streak. As Garrus stood over what was left of Kron Harga, Shepard sidled up to him and let out a low whistle.

“I know krogan are tough to kill but...wow, Garrus. Just _wow._ ”

The rest of the squad were sweeping the warehouse, and out of earshot.

“The crate full of explosives was pure luck,” he said. “Thanks for finding it, by the way.”

“I live to serve. Let me make sure I’ve got it right. You shot him in all his extremities and primary organs.”

“In alphabetical order.”

“Then you and Ripper took turns smashing your rifle butts in his face.”

“Who am I to hog all the fun?”

“Then yours truly pointed out the explosive crate, the second squad got him into position, and whatever you didn’t shoot got burned to a crisp.”

“I think that covers it. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

Shepard poked Kron Harga’s body with the toe of her boot. “I think you need a hobby, Garrus. Maybe painting.”

“Oi boss!” Butler waved at him from across the warehouse. “Found his personal datapads. They’re encrypted, but I don’t think our wee Weaver’ll have much trouble.”

“You could write haiku. Or sonnets.” Shepard winked.

“Good work, Butler. Tell Weaver decrypting them is her top priority, and once it’s finished, I want an anonymous copy sent to C-Sec and the Alliance. If Kron Harga kept records of what colonies he hit, they might be able to help close some missing persons cases.”

“Right-o.” Butler stashed the datapads in a pocket and went on with his sweep.

“Baking,” said Shepard. “You could have your own extranet show.”

He let out an exasperated subvocal that couldn’t be defined in human terms. Most humans wouldn’t have been able to hear it, but Shepard caught the tail end of it and frowned up at him.

“I’m sure I’m missing the finer details, but that was something rude, wasn’t it?”

He lifted his brow plates and didn’t answer.

“We’re all clear, boss.” Sidonis started jogging back to Garrus. “Picked up some extra medi-gels and mods.”

“Found an arseload of credits stashed all over the place,” Butler shouted. “Jesus, krogans really are hoarders, aren’t they?”

Garrus nodded, waiting until the rest of the squad joined him. Shepard crowded close and he tried to ignore the bubble of warmth expanding in his chest.

If this was the rest of his life, he wouldn’t complain. He had a good squad, a good gun, a good fight.

He had Shepard.

***

Things were a bit of a blur after that. The squad split up to take their separate ways back to base, and by the time Garrus arrived, Butler was already into the ryncol, and had reached a decibel level to match.

“What a bastard. Didn’t even wait for the boss to get back before he started the party,” said Shepard, and Garrus had enough time to start laughing before almost seven feet of scarred, shouting human was bearing down on him like a dreadnought.

“Boss!” he roared. “Boss, tonight, we drink on Kron Harga’s dime! Get outta yer suit, we’re goin’ to Afterlife.” Behind Butler, Sensat beamed. _Fuck yeah,_ he mouthed.

Erash and Sidonis pounded him on the back, shouting unintelligibly. Melanis shoved a mug of ryncol at him. Somewhere nearby, Weaver was yelling at someone that she was _totally old enough to drink, dickwipe_ , _I’m not staying here_ and Vortash had an arm slung around Mierin’s shoulders, completely failing at hiding his joy.

A great hot swell of pride and love washed through Garrus. Ten months into the fight, and it wouldn’t end any time soon. But tonight was the first time they all saw the end -- when they could walk away from Omega knowing that they’d not just done their best, but _won._

***

Afterlife was packed. It smelled like sweat and old booze and somewhere, deep down under all of it, like the tang of blood.

Garrus hung back with Shepard, marking exits and good cover out of habit. Butler and Sidonis bulldozed their way to the bar, throwing down credit chits and yelling drink orders. The bartender’s gaze flicked above their heads.

“No charge,” he said. “You guys drink for free tonight. Aria’s orders.”

Butler whooped and pointed at a bottle of something thick and poisonously orange. Garrus turned slowly, once the rest of his squad was distracted, and looked up at Aria’s balcony.

The asari was watching him. Their gazes met, and Aria lifted her glass to him without changing her expression. A second later, his omni-tool beeped.

_Nice show. Make sure your ambition doesn’t outlast your entertainment value. I have a short attention span._

“That’s not creepy,” said Shepard, standing on tiptoes to read over his shoulders.

Of course Aria knew, and of course Aria wouldn’t do more than warn him. He’d left her concerns alone, and as long as he did, she’d just watch.

Sensat handed him a glass of something murky and sweet-smelling. Garrus lifted the glass to Aria. She barely glanced at him before she turned away.

***

Garrus stayed for three rounds, long enough to see Sidonis collapse on a couch after trying to match shots with Butler. Guilt over leaving Ripper and Weaver behind on home duty gnawed at him, but the real teeth belonged to the looks Shepard gave him whenever he took a drink: sly, secretive, and all his.

He stood up. A chorus of boos from the squad greeted him and four new glasses were shoved in his direction. None of them were dextro-friendly, but the message was clear: _stay, stay, stay, stay._

“If I don’t leave, how can the real party start?” he said, evading Melanis as she tried to catch his arm. “Consider this my gift to all of you.”

“Boss!” whined Mierin. “We haven’t gotten you your lapdance yet!”

Shepard burst out laughing. “Oh my god, Garrus, your _face._ We can’t leave. I have to see this.”

“Aah, no. Just... no.” Garrus wasn’t sure who he was responding to. “I appreciate the... obvious thought that went into -- wait, no, I don’t. No. I’m leaving.”

Melanis grabbed for his arm again and ended up tumbling over a half-conscious Vortash. “Boss!” she yelled. “Asari are _very flexible._ Do you understand?”

“Oh, I understand, I just. I can’t. There are... things.”

“I was right!” crowed Mierin. “Secret wife! Or husband! Pay up!” Grundan and Erash reached into their pockets, grumbling. Mierin cooed as she counted her winnings.

“Last time I bet against an asari,” sighed Erash.

“Damn right,” chorused the sisters.

Shepard, damn her, was laughing so hard she could barely stand. “These people,” she gasped, “are amazing. Where did you find them? I thought the Normandy’s collection of daddy issues was impressive but this? This is  _art_.”

“Make sure everyone makes it home,” Garrus growled at the sisters, who were the only two left who looked completely sober. “Got me? We’re back to business at 0700 tomorrow.”

“We get you,” said Mierin, her eyes still on the credits in her cupped palms. “See you in the morning, boss.”

Garrus stalked out, neck flaming hot. Still giggling, Shepard trailed behind him. Once they were away from the noise and the lights near Omega, in the darker alleys of the districts, Garrus grabbed Shepard by the shoulders and pushed her into a wall.

“I’m happy you’re happy, but could you at least _pretend_ you don’t enjoy seeing me embarrassed?”

She wriggled in his grip. “Oh come on, Garrus. They’re just looking out for you. Well, for _part_ of you.”

_“Shepard.”_

“Does being on your squad mean I can’t laugh at you? Let me tell you, that’s a dealbreaker.” Shepard gripped his wrists and squeezed. “Consider this payback for all the Mako jokes.”

“You deserved every one, Shepard. I still have bruises on my ass from your driving.”

Shepard ran her hand up his arm. “And you never begged off a mission if I pulled you. Maybe you’re a just a glutton for punishment.”

“Maybe you’re just a sadist who enjoys torturing non-humans.”

“Just one,” she said. Her hand curled around the back of his neck and stroked once, under the clasp of his visor. Her grin turned wicked when he shuddered and let her go.

“Weren’t we going home?” she asked, all innocence. “You had important boss things to do, right? Like cleaning your gun?” Her fingers skidded low over the skin of his neck.

 _Damn her. She knows exactly what she’s doing_.

She tilted her head and bared the side of her neck to the weak light. _To my teeth_ , Garrus thought, and banished the idea as quickly as he could. He couldn’t stop a groan when her hand slid under his jaw.

“I can’t exactly think when you do that,” he said, only one larynx working. Was it too soon? Should he even bother questioning this?

Laughing, Shepard leaned in close enough to kiss. She stopped a few centimeters away from his mouth. “It’s not my fault you’re so easily distracted.” When she stepped away, he stumbled.

“Race you,” she hissed, and took off down the alley. By the time Garrus got his feet moving, Shepard was already out of sight.

***

Ripper nodded sleepily at Garrus as he came in. Weaver was asleep on the couch, a frown still nicking the skin between her eyebrows.

“She told me to wake her up when you got home so she could yell at you,” said Ripper. “But I think I’ll just tell her you came in the back door.”

“Thanks, Ripper. Listen, I’ll be awake for a while. Go find your boyfriend.”

Ripper saluted him. “Don’t have to tell me twice. Good night, boss.” After he was gone, Garrus threw a blanket over Weaver and turned down the lights in the common room.

Shepard was cross-legged on his bed. Her boots were off. Garrus stared.

“What?” she asked. He pointed wordlessly at her feet.

“Do my toes freak you out?”

“You took your boots off.” Iit was a stupid thing to fixate on, when Shepard was in the nest of his covers, but there were _implications_ here. He hadn’t thought of her clothes as anything more than a part of whatever she was, but _now_.

“Yeah, I did.” She cocked her head at him again. “Point?”

“I didn’t think you could do that. Change what you look like. I don’t know!”

“Oh my god, it’s not like I took my shirt off.”

And just like that, the implications were images. “You can do that too?”

“Right to business, huh? I’ve been back all of twenty-four hours and you’re already trying to get into my pants.”

“No! No!” Garrus threw up his hands. “It’s not that! I just -- _why are you laughing?”_

“I’m going to sprain something trying not to tease you.” Shepard pushed off the bed and walked toward him. He kept his hands up, but when she pulled them down her face was serious. “Garrus, I’ve got to ask. You’ve done this before, right?”

“Done what?”

“You’re going to make me say it, dammit.” She chewed her lip. “You’ve had -- girlfriends before? Or the turian equivalent? Please tell me your first experience with sex isn’t going to be with a ghost. Because that would be the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I’ve had sex before,” he hissed. “There were a few in training, and then this recon scout, and once, on Illium --”

“Whoa whoa whoa! I believe you!” It was Shepard’s turn to throw up her hands and take a step back. “Why can’t anything ever be easy?” she said, half to herself. “Okay, ground rule number one: If your ex-human girlfriend asks about your previous relationships, mention one or two _at most_ , and never give details. It’s not a numbers game.”

“O-okay.” He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so badly unprepared for a conversation. Hadn’t they been talking about boots a few seconds ago? “Wait, girlfriend? Shepard, I --”

“Hey. Look at me.” Shepard put her hands on his face, her thumbs moving in slow circles over his mandibles. “I’m sorry if I weirded you out. I’m jumping ahead. I’m used to falling into bed with someone and figuring the rest out later if the sex is good.” She cringed. “Ugh, too much information?”

“No, I’m used to full disclosure.” _Not to mention turians don’t have all these territorial mating instincts over the past._

“Good to know.” She kept touching his face, and the tension building in his back started to dissolve. “So do you?” she said. “Want this, I mean. When I came back last night, things were intense. Not that you’ve had much time to think it over. And I’m going to shut up now.”

It was reassuring that nervous talking existed across the species line. Whatever they had started, Shepard was just as thrown by it as he was. Garrus cupped her face, tracing the scars at her eye and mouth.

“I never let myself think about it before you found me here, but yeah, I want it.” She leaned into his touch. “Besides, if you have to spend your afterlife with me, might as well get a few perks out of it, right?”

“Don’t get cocky, I haven’t gotten to try these perks out.” She kissed his cheek. “Look, we’ll take this as slow as you want. The last thing I want is to push you and get you all distracted. You’ve got enough on your mind.”

“You had to go and remind me,” he groaned. “I’m on patrol in four hours.”

“Then go to bed,” she said. “I’ll stare at you while you sleep.”

When Garrus laughed, it felt like the first time in years.

***

“I’m not speaking to you,” said Weaver the next morning. “Just so we’re clear.”

“Good morning to you too, Weaver.” Garrus brushed past her on his way to grab rations.

“ _Strippers_ , boss. Strippers! And you made me stay home. God, you’re not my _dad_.”

“I give daily thanks for that. I want a report on any comm chatter you picked up before we head out.” As much as Weaver liked whining, she never complained about her actual job. She gave him a nod and finished off her coffee in one gulp.

“I hope I wasn’t that bad when I was her age,” Shepard mused. “I don’t know about turians, but eighteen-year-old humans are a special breed of monster.”

“Teenagers are monsters, no matter the species. Maybe Sovereign was just hitting Reaper puberty.”

“Still talking to yourself?” Sidonis bit off the end of a ration bar and chewed while he talked. He looked wrecked, but _wrecked_ was better than what Garrus had expected after a night of drinking with Butler. He hadn’t expected Sidonis to be able to talk.

“Still,” Garrus said agreeably, turning away to avoid watching Sidonis eat. Most of the squad lacked sophisticated manners, but Sidonis was the worst. “Can’t seem to stop.”

“You could use that,” suggested Sidonis. “Let the mercs overhear you. They’ll think you’re crazy.”

“Why haven’t you thought of that?” Shepard leaned against the wall and quirked an eyebrow at Garrus. “You just came to Omega and started fighting mercs on your own. Nothing crazy about that.”

“Shut up,” said Garrus, not sure who he was talking to. Shepard rolled her eyes. Sidonis laughed.

“Just like that. When in doubt, freak ‘em out.”

“Sidonis, _shut up._ ” He walked away, leaving Sidonis to chuckle to himself. The rest of the squad straggled in, looking half-dead and searching for painkillers. Butler looked like he’d had ten hours of sleep instead of two.

“I want him to meet Wrex someday,” said Shepard. “No, actually, I don’t. Forget I said that. Lifetime of brain damage talking.”

Garrus nodded at Weaver to start her report. Halfway through the rundown, Shepard let her hand curve around his neck, cool and solid.


	8. Chapter 8

The metaphysics of the situation were beyond either of them, but the facts were simple.

Fact: Shepard had died.

Fact: Shepard had come back.

Fact: Shepard had come back _to him_.

Garrus tried to decode what it all meant, but that meant less time existing in the present -- and since his present contained enough to fill his head and more, he stopped caring about the _why_ and _how_ , and focused on _who_.

***

Three days after taking down Kron Harga, Garrus had been on Omega almost eleven months.

He woke up alone. That wasn’t unusual; Shepard rambled while he slept and reported back when he woke up for his pre-dawn watch.

It took a glance at his omni-tool and seeing the date before he realized why she was gone.

It was all over the extranet again.

_Commander Shepard, hero of the Citadel, died one year ago today..._

He dressed slowly and tried to figure out a way to apologize when she came back, and didn’t think about any what-ifs.  

***

Halfway through his watch, Shepard reappeared. The look on her face -- sharp, pensive, absorbed -- cut clean through the apology he’d planned.

“I’m going to ask you a weird question, Garrus.”

“Uh, right. Go ahead?” He shifted and got a better grip on his rifle.

“Did you see my body? At the funeral? Or an urn, if they cremated me?”

At the time, the last thing Garrus had wanted to pay attention to was Shepard’s body, or the lack thereof. He forced himself to remember.

“There wasn’t anything. Well, there were flowers, and a whole lot of singing and some speeches, but there was just a picture of you at the front of the room. No. I didn’t see it. You. Your body. They didn’t even have a coffin.”

Shepard nodded and ran her fingers through her hair. Garrus wanted to touch her, but the waves of nervous energy rising off her body kept him at a distance.

“I went to Alchera. It seemed like a good idea. First anniversary of being dead, why not go visit where it happened? God, I’m morbid sometimes. But I went. Worst trip I’ve made.”

Garrus had wanted to warn her away from Alchera. Going there felt like she would stretch whatever tied them together to the thinnest thread, but he kept his mouth shut.

“I -- my body -- wasn’t there.” She chewed her lip and stared over his shoulder.

“The Alliance came, Shepard. They wouldn’t leave your body there.”

“That’s the weird thing, Garrus. The Alliance hadn’t been there, as far as I could see. There were dogs tags all over the place. And you can be sure as hell that the Alliance wouldn’t have left those behind if they came to get what was left of me.” She met his eyes for the first time. “I found my old helmet.”

“Shepard.”

“Okay, sorry, I know, it’s just... so weird, talking about myself like this. Not even me, just my body. It’s making me crazy, trying to figure all this out.”

“Did you find anything else?”

“Yeah. Tire tracks in the snow. They were almost gone, but someone landed there after the crash. Two sets of footprints. It was creepy.”

“Creepy, yeah, I can see that.” The distracted way she kept shoving her hands through her hair, like she wasn’t sure what else to do with them, unnerved Garrus.

“If not the Alliance, then who, Garrus?”

“No idea, Shepard, whoever it is, they can’t hurt you now.” He inched closer and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Remember that.”

She leaned into him. “What would I do without you?” she asked. He hummed back, anxiety easing away.

***

That night, he woke up with one thought in his head.

_The Reapers. What if the Reapers took her?_

It was a long time before he went back to sleep.

***

“You remember what I said about hobbies, Garrus?” Shepard leaned against him and he had to remind himself not to sling an arm around her. “Forget it. You’re already an artist.”

Gus Williams -- to be more precise, what was left of Gus Williams -- was smeared on the floor in front of them. Most of his head was gone.

“I don’t think covering walls with blood counts as art, but thanks, in any case,” he said, his voice low and just for her ears. He held the killing pistol up to the light. “Interesting model. I think I’ll keep it.”

“Are we collecting souvenirs now, boss?” Vortash holstered his own gun and crossed the room. “Nice touch, using his own weapons to blow him away.”

“I thought so. It seemed... symmetrical.”

“We’re getting known for our elegant solutions,” said Sensat. He was stripping the corpses of any valuables, and didn’t seem to mind that he was wrist-deep in the blood of one of Williams’ men. “Should we tone it down?”

“Toning it down is no fun,” Weaver replied through a mouthful of wires. “Thanks for letting me try out my new sticky bombs. Looks like they worked. Should they go into rotation?”

Garrus thought it over. Shepard rolled her shoulders and cut him a look under her lashes, waiting for his reply.

_Caution could be the difference between a win and a dead squad._

“I want another test run before I give you the green light. There’s a two-second delay between you hitting the trigger and the bombs going off.”

Weaver spat out the wires. “It’ll be fine. I can shave off at least oh point five seconds by overclocking the processor on my omni-tool. No worries.”

“Make it one point five and they’re in. All right, whatever you’re doing, finish it up and get back to cover. Weaver got the updates on the merc patrols and there’ll be one coming through in seven minutes. I want to hit them while we’re here.” After the rest of the squad had hidden themselves and checked in over the secure comm channel, Garrus eased himself behind a crate, Shepard at his side.

“Any last minute advice?” he whispered. She gave him a half-smile and touched his mouth with the tip of a finger.

He heard the mercs’ footsteps coming down the hall, and waited until they saw the bodies before he started shooting.

***

“Maybe Liara took my body.”

“I don’t think she’s the type to keep bits of you scattered around her apartment, Shepard. Wouldn’t you have known if she did? You’ve gone to see her.” Garrus poked at the innards of his omni-tool and tried not to swear. He’d be damned if he went crawling to Weaver for help.

“It’s not like I’m hovering around her all the time, Garrus. And she was gone for a while. I don’t know. I’d just feel better if she took it, whatever her reasons.”

“You _are_ morbid.”

“Side effect of being dead,” she said with a smile, and rolled on her belly. “Why are you torturing your omni-tool?”

“It’s called upgrading, Shepard.”

“I thought you were some tech expert. I’m starting to have my doubts.”

He threw down the tool and tried not to let his irritation into his voice. “If all you’re planning to do is give me a hard time, I have to warn you, I’m not in the mood.”

“Hey, hey.” Shepard slid off the bed and padded barefoot to his desk. Garrus kept his eyes on his omni-tool and didn’t turn his head when she touched his shoulder. “I was just teasing. No harm, right?”

He grunted.

“I didn’t know you were having such a bad night. Want to talk about it?”

“No,” he said, too shortly. Shepard started rubbing her hand over the join in his back plates, exactly where the tension was centered. “It’s not that it’s a bad night,” he amended. “I’m tired, Shepard. It’s been over a year and we haven’t had a break, except after you had to save our asses. We’re all tired. We’re getting sloppy, but we can’t stop.”

“Says who?” asked Shepard lightly. She kept rubbing his back, her nimble fingers cool through his undersuit. He’d been so exhausted after the last patrol that he hadn’t even bothered to change before falling into bed. A shower would wake him up and take care of the aches in his muscles, for a little while, but he was reluctant to get up. “This is your mission, your squad. If you think a break is what your squad needs, then you take the break. Omega will still have bad guys when you get back.”

“What about everyone they hurt while we’re relaxing and having fun? How can I look at myself in the mirror when I know I’ve failed someone?”

Shepard slid around him and sat on his desk. Slowly, so he could stop her if he wanted to, she unclasped his visor and set it behind her. She smoothed her fingers over his fringe, down over his mandibles and to the tender spot under his jaw. He couldn’t stop his eyes from closing, or a purr from leaving his mouth.

“You can’t save everyone, Garrus. It’s a hard truth, but maybe it’s the only one for people like us.”

“So what do I do?”

“You save as many as you can. But you won’t be able to save anyone if you’re burned out.” She lifted his head and he met her gaze. “My advice, boss? Take the break. Send them home, if they want to go.” She smiled, a little sadly. “You never know when it might be the last chance to see the people you care about.”

Garrus shook his head, but he knew Shepard was right. He sighed and let his shoulders slump. With his right arm, he groped blindly for Shepard’s waist and pulled her into his lap. She curled against him and pressed her mouth to his neck, just to make him shiver. He tried to stay present, to not think about what might come next, but when her hands met under his fringe, he gave in, just this once.

They’d been reserved so far, almost chaste. She touched him almost constantly, but only on the arms or back. She hadn’t even kissed him aside from on the mandible since the first time -- though his clumsy attempts to reciprocate were probably why. If he was ever tempted to slide his hand under her shirt to feel her ribs, or if he ever wondered what her legs would feel like around his waist, the thoughts never left his skull.

Until tonight.

“You won’t disappear if I try something, will you?” he asked. Shepard’s only response was to scratch her nails down his neck. _I suppose that’s a yes_ , he thought, and dipped his tongue into the hollow of her throat.

Shepard jolted against him. He smothered a laugh in her shoulder.

“You bastard,” she hissed. “You’ve been holding out on me.” Garrus couldn’t stop his mandibles from flexing in a grin.

“Sorry, Shepard. Didn’t know the protocol for asking your _ex-human girlfriend_ if she wouldn’t mind if you did this.” He slipped his hand under her shirt, stopping just under the curve of her breasts. Shepard groaned.

“The protocol is to just do it, dammit. I’ll tell you if I don’t want something.”

“Just trying to follow the chain of command.” He hissed when she set her teeth, small and blunt, to his neck.

“Being a smartass is a mood-killer,” she murmured. She ran the broad flat of her tongue over the faint teeth-marks in his hide. “How far are you willing to take this?” she asked.

“I thought the protocol --”

Shepard pushed out of his lap, avoiding his hands when he tried to pull her back. “Always with the comebacks, Garrus.” Her hands moved to the hem of her shirt and yanked it over her head. A scar bisected her belly, but her skin was smooth and taut over layers of hard muscle. Her breasts were covered by two cups of fabric, and Garrus knew, on some level, she wanted him to be interested in them, but her ribs and collarbones distracted him.

“I’ve never had to tell a guy to look at my breasts,” sighed Shepard. “Eyes a little lower, Garrus.”

“Sorry. Not used to anything interesting above the waist.” He leaned back in his chair and gave her what he hoped was a bored, speculative look. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“Maybe a practical demonstration will help,” said Shepard. She twisted her arms behind her back, and the material covering her breasts fell away. Her skin was rosy at the tips, and hardened when the air touched them.

“Huh.”

“Oh, shut up. These are breasts.” She cupped her hands around the fullest part, then framed the tips between her thumb and first finger. “And these are nipples.” She squeezed, sighing as her head tilted to the side. “Very sensitive, very...sensitive. That’s all you need to know.”

“And why would I need to know that?” Garrus congratulated himself on how steady he managed to sound, especially after Shepard’s hands started teasing her nipples, twisting roughly and pinching. Watching her was doing all kinds of odd things to his sexual conditioning -- since when were breasts more interesting than ankle bones? When she gasped, he bit his tongue.

“That’s why,” she said, her grin so sharp he could cut himself. “Consider this your first lesson in human arousal.” She swung herself onto the bed and stretched out. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve found something much better to do with my time than deal with a cranky turian.” Her hands moved back to her breasts, her eyes fluttering closed.

Garrus turned back to his omni-tool. He knew Shepard well enough to understand that the game meant as much to her as winning, and stringing it out was just as pleasurable for him as it was for her. He poked at the wiring a few times, but when Shepard cried out, he threw the tools down and stood up.

She gave him a heavy-lidded glance, all smug satisfaction.

“Finally giving in, huh?”

He hummed as he sat down next to her. “You’re more fun to look at than a bunch of wires.” She squeezed her breasts and let out a little moan. Garrus had to shift position to ease the pressure against his groin plates. _Think of the game_ , he told himself.  

“My God.” Shepard’s eyes closed. “That’s possibly the least sexy thing anyone has ever said to me, but in your voice? Like I need any more kinks.”

He touched her belly with the tip of one talon and drew it up, over the skin between her breasts. “So much soft skin. Makes me wonder what would happen if I ever tried to take you down.”

“I’d kick your ass,” she said, a little breathlessly.

“Oh, I don’t doubt it.” On a whim, he let both larynxes open, a low drone filling in the space under his words. He circled her breasts with his talon. “That’s not to say I wouldn’t enjoy it. But you are full of surprises, Shepard.” When she shivered, he closed his hand over hers. His palm covered her breast completely. “No one looking at you right now would think you’re as dangerous as you are.”

“Good thing you’re the only one looking, and you know better.” He squeezed, just a hint of pressure, and Shepard gasped.

“Yes, God, more of that.” Her back arched into his touch. She pulled her hands free and lifted them over her head. “And keep talking.”

It sounded like a bad vid in his head, but it was out of his mouth before he could stop it. “I can think of better things to do with my mouth,” he purred, with a belated inward wince, and bent down. Shepard’s entire body went taut as his tongue touched her nipple.

“Much better,” she sighed. He cupped her other breast, squeezing and teasing the hard peak as he let more of his tongue play over her skin.

Garrus had always prided himself on being a quick study, and a few moments were all he needed to have Shepard gasping under him. He kept hoping for her skin to warm, but she stayed cool, no matter what he did.

At least it sounded like he was doing well, and soon her hands came down to grab at his neck, his shoulders, anything she could reach. He licked a long trail from her breasts, over her neck to her mouth, and she pulled him on top of her.

“Garrus,” she whispered, her voice husky. He wanted her to sound like that forever. He’d find a way, given enough time --

Two knocks at the door. They both froze.

“I’m hallucinating that,” said Garrus. “Or I’m having a nightmare. Either way, I’m ignoring it.”

“Thank God,” said Shepard, and pulled him into a kiss. He opened his mouth, trying to imitate the way her tongue moved. She shivered.

Two more knocks.

“Boss?”

Shepard broke the kiss and fell back to the pillows. “I’m going to kill them. I don’t care who it is. They’re dead.”

“Agreed,” growled Garrus. “What do you want?” he yelled in the general direction of the door, never taking his eyes from Shepard.

“I want to go over our medi-gel upgrades with you before the evening check-in,” answered Erash. “Got a minute?”

“Be right there,” he said.

“Thanks, boss.”

“That’s one dead salarian,” said Shepard. Because she was a horrible, evil woman, she pulled his hands back to her breasts. “You really only need one medic, right?”

Garrus groaned. “If I don’t go, they’ll all come to see if I’m all right, and I don’t want them seeing me like this,” he whispered. “You know, fondling _air_ and moaning by myself.”

Shepard laughed and let go of his hands. “Fair point. But it would be hilarious.”

Garrus sighed and bumped his forehead against Shepard’s. “Later?” he asked. She smiled, slow and private.

“That’s what the break’ll be for,” she said. “For all the _laters_ we can come up with.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, have another 3,000 word chapter, my darlings :)


	9. Chapter 9

Garrus decided not to waste time. If the squad was going to get a break, better now than later. He didn’t expect their reactions.

Monteague swore unintelligibly until Ripper punched him in the arm to shut him up. Weaver and the sisters started yelling. Even Vortash and Grundan looked furious.

“No fuckin’ way, boss.” Butler folded his arms and did his best imitation of a mountain. “We’re not goin’ anywhere. There’s work to do.”

From the corner of his eye, Garrus saw Shepard nod. He waited until the squad had worn itself out before speaking, and then he chose his words carefully.

“There’s always going to be scum, Butler. There will always be someone to fight. But we’re getting sloppy. Erash, you were asleep on guard duty two nights ago when I came down, and Weaver, you still haven’t fixed the delay on the sticky bombs.”

“It’ll get done, boss!” she protested, almost shrill. He held up a hand.

“My point is, we’re up against three merc companies on a daily basis. Not to mention all the slavers, smugglers, murderers, thieves, and psychos who show up to test us. We’ve made a name for ourselves.”

“That’s the price of popularity,” said Vortash. “Why stop now? We’ve got them running scared. I say, keep hitting them.”

“I hope none of you have forgotten we’re still just people,” said Garrus. “We make mistakes.” The humans, in unison, rolled their eyes. “I’m not moving on this. We can’t afford to make stupid mistakes. If we do, more people than us will get hurt.”

No one spoke. Garrus took the time to look at each of their faces. As well as some of them hid it, there was exhaustion in everyone’s features. He knew Monteague had used stims at least once on a mission, and that it was a matter of time before the rest of the squad gave in to the temptation. It galled him to take a break, but the only other option was to watch the squad crumble.

“Two weeks,” he said, and waited for the uproar. It was quieter than he expected. Either they believed him, or they were more tired than he thought. “Talk to me about where you want to go and we’ll stagger departures and returns. No one takes a direct route home, and everyone goes armed. I have the shell accounts ready for buying passage to wherever you want to go.” He took a deep breath, ready for their last question. It surprised him that no one had asked yet

“What about you?” Sidonis balanced his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward. Garrus saw the way his plates were bunched and uneven from tension. “You’re not staying here, are you?”

“Someone has to hold the base,” said Garrus. “I don’t plan on anything more than random patrols.”

“Alone?” Sensat frowned. “Boss, come on.”

“Don’t forget, I was on my own for a while before I started collecting you misfits,” said Garrus. He laid his hand on Weaver’s head. After a moment, she leaned into him, her eyes closing.

“Thank you,” said Mierin. “We need this.” Grundan nodded.

***

Sensat, Grundan, and Weaver were the last to leave, on separate shuttles an hour apart. They were headed to the Citadel, through various tangled routes. Garrus went with Weaver, even though part of him warned against it, with Shepard close at his side.

“Don’t touch any of my stuff,” said Weaver at the shuttle dock. “Seriously. I’ll kill you and pee on your corpse.”

“You’re repulsive,” Garrus sighed. “Be safe.”

“You too, boss.” She hesitated before throwing her arms around him. “I’m going to miss everyone,” she said into his carapace, warm and fierce and so very young. “Even you. Even if you think you’re my dad. Don’t get killed.”

“I’ll do my best. Go get your shuttle.” She pulled away and headed for the shuttle without looking back. Garrus watched until Weaver disappeared into the shuttle. When he looked down, Shepard was grinning at him.

“ _What_.”

“You totally are her dad,” said Shepard. She kissed him when he started to protest. “It’s okay. Everyone wants to protect her. Too bad she’s such a little monster.”

“I can’t believe she said she’d urinate on my corpse.”

“Knowing Weaver, that’d be the least of the horrors she’d unleash. Come on. Let’s go home.”

***

The base was quiet as a tomb after the squad was gone.

Garrus kept that metaphor to himself.

***

“Garrus?” Shepard leaned against him from behind as he sat at his desk, staring into space. “You’re a million miles away.”

“I just realized I’ve spent more time with my squad than I did with everyone on the Normandy. Seems strange.”

“Maybe you should try to get in touch.” Shepard floated the idea lightly. Garrus considered but shook his head.

“No. I’m here. No distractions. Well, except you.” Shepard laughed. “But if they come, I’ll be ready.” No need to ask who the they was.

“The Reapers haven’t made a move in over a year.” Shepard dropped into his lap. “Maybe Sovereign was just a test and they’re regrouping. Maybe we bought ourselves some time.” She curled her legs around his. “Maybe there won’t be a cycle this time around.”

“I never pegged you for an optimist, Shepard.” He pressed his nose into the hollow under her ear.

“I’ve got nothing to lose hoping for the best. But just between us...”

“You think they’re still coming.”

She sighed heavily. “Yeah, I do.”

He would been content to sit with Shepard coiled around him until the squad came back, but after a moment he groaned and shifted her off his lap. Her eyes followed him as he crossed the room.

“Patrol?” she asked.

“Patrol.” Garrus opened his armor case. “Shepard, I want you to stay here.”

There was a pause, long enough for him to start to tense up, before Shepard sighed.

“Don’t suppose you’ll tell me why.”

“I’m alone,” he said. “And before you tell me that’s all the more reason to take you, hear me out. Weaver left the proximity charges in place, but if a large enough group comes through -- if the mercs figure out where we are -- I need someone here to blow the internal charges.”

Shepard drummed her fingers on the wall. “Yeah. Make sure there’s nothing left for them to find that links you or the squad back here. I get it.” She sighed again. “I don’t like it, but I get it.”

“Right.” He waited until the last seals closed before he turned around. “You can blow the charges and warn me before anyone hears about the blast.” Shepard didn’t say anything. “I’m not saying this because I don’t want you to come, but you had to know I’d tell you to do this.”

“I was hoping you’d give in to sentiment for once,” she said with a half-grin. “Just promise me not to do anything stupid.”

Garrus picked up his helmet. “I can’t promise that. Stupidity’s contagious on Omega.”

“That’s what you have the helmet for.” Shepard swung down from the bed and padded barefoot to him. “No heroics,” she said.

“I’m Archangel. Heroics are what I do.” Before she could say anything else, he pressed his forehead to hers and tucked her hair behind her ears. “I’ll be back before you can get bored."

***

Bravado aside, Garrus had every intention of keeping a low profile on patrol. A few sweeps, planting some of Weaver’s security bugs, a judiciously placed computer virus, and then he’d head home.

Of course, all his plans went out the window when he rounded a corner and found Garm taking a piss against the side of a wall.

 _Sorry, Shepard. I’m about to be an idiot_ , he thought, and lined up his first shot.

The shot hit Garm in the shoulder. The krogan made a choking noise and stumbled back. Garrus swallowed a laugh when the krogan tried to tuck himself back into his armor and aim his shotgun at the same time.

Unfortunately, that pause was all Garm needed to zero in on where Garrus was hiding.

“ _Archangel_.” Garm’s face cracked open in a parody of a smile. “I know that’s you. And I only smell your stench, so you must be alone.”

Well, that’s not good. Garrus lined up his next shot and fired. It caught Garm in the gut, and Garrus had just enough time to lob a flashbang grenade overhand at Garm and aim.

Once the afterimages bled away, Garm was only a few feet away. The grin wasn’t going anywhere.

“Let’s see how good you really are, you little piece of pyjak shit,” Garm said, the last word turning into a roar as he charged.

Garrus whipped around the corner, switching to incendiary rounds as he moved. His rifle would be useless up close, but if he could get enough of a head start --

“I’m gonna find your little toadies, Archangel, and when I do, I’ll feed you their eyes.”

Forget the head start. His pistol had incendiary rounds too.

He turned, already firing. Without his visor, he missed how Garm’s first heart stopped and his second took over. The krogan stumbled back. Garrus kept shooting until the thermal clip ran out. Reloading, he kept running. 

He saw an abandoned store ahead, with windows over the alley, vorcha scrounging through the trash in the doorway. He barreled through them and raced up to the second floor. Leading Garm into such a tight space was a risk, but if it meant he could get off a few rounds with his rifle, maybe take out a few more primary organs, it was worth it.

Garm staggered back to his feet, his breathing rough and clotted with blood, and started to count. Ten seconds was the most Garrus had to get into position. Five to climb the stairs, two to get into position. Three seconds, three shots.

_Keep him at a distance. Disable the hands. He can’t shoot without fingers and those take longer to grow back than eyes._

Not that a krogan needed guns to be deadly, but one advantage less meant a few more seconds to deal with Garm’s natural defenses.

“I know you’re in there, Archangel!” The vorcha scattered, but one was unlucky; Garrus heard a shriek, and a wet crunch. He didn’t feel pity or even revulsion. Everything melted away as his focus narrowed to a single purpose: kill Garm. No room for hoping he’d make it out alive.

Garrus swung out of his crouch and fired. Garm’s right hand disintegrated. The idiot didn’t even have his shields up. Garrus fired again. The shot went wide and buried itself, sizzling, in the wall a few inches from Garm’s head. The krogan looked up from his already-healing stump and smiled.

“This’ll be fun,” he said, and plowed toward the store. The impact rattled down to the foundations and Garrus stumbled back from the window. He almost lost his grip on his rifle, and lost the chance for a shot as Garm backed up for another run.

When Garm veered into his sight, he risked coming out of cover to shoot Garm in the knee. Garm’s armor kept his leg from blowing clean off, but the krogan went down long enough for Garrus to shoot him in the other knee. While Garm groaned as bones and muscles re-knit, Garrus leapt from the window.

He hit the ground hard on his right foot. Pain lanced up through his leg; he thought his ankle was broken, but when he put tentative weight on the leg, the bones complained but held.

_I can run. I have to run._

“If you’re the best the Blood Pack’s got,” he sneered at Garm, “then I fear for the future of criminals on this station.”

Garm roared and swung for him. Garrus backed easily out of range as he switched back to his pistol.

“First, I catch you alone. Then you’re too stupid to even put up your shields. No wonder the Blue Suns and Eclipse think Blood Pack’s a waste of oxygen.” He punctuated every other word with a shot to keep Garm down while Garrus taunted him.

 _Finish it_ , said the dry, unimpressed voice in his head that always, always had Shepard’s face. _He’s playing you, he’s not as hurt as he looks._

This time, he listened.

“Good night, Garm,” he said, and aimed for his second heart.

The krogan heaved toward Garrus on knees still half-healed and fragile as old plastic. How they supported Garm’s weight was a mystery. Garrus aimed low and blew out Garm’s knee for the second time. Garm collapsed, a thousand pounds of flesh and armor hitting the ground hard enough to make Garrus stagger.

The split-second Garrus needed to catch his balance was all the time Garm needed to pull out his own gun, and fire.

Weaver and Erash had spent months tinkering with Garrus’ shields. A single shot -- even from Garm’s shotgun at near point-blank range -- didn’t make them do more than shiver.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Garrus said, and fired. Garm rocked back. “Still haven’t gotten your shields up.”

Later, when he was on the Normandy again, Garrus would think of this moment and realize it was the beginning of the end.

Garm’s grin turned wide and hungry. “Nice shields. Your little tech princess cook them up?”

Garrus froze. _Weaver_.

“She tried them on the Blue Suns before you rescued her. We _know_ her. And we’ll know the rest of your squad soon. I’m not as stupid as I look, Archangel.” His knees were healed. Garrus had time for one shot before he had to run.

And now it was a race.

***

Every time Garrus managed to get a shot, he bought himself a little more time. It wasn’t until he realized they were almost back at the Kima District that he turned and faced Garm again. He held his ground as Garm rushed him, waiting until the last second before he threw himself out of the way and circled back the way he came.

He wouldn’t lead the krogan anywhere near the base.

 _Shepard_ , he thought, heart pounding painfully in his chest, _Shepard, I hope you’re watching. I could use the help._

The danger wasn’t extreme, not yet. He was pushing himself, but he had plenty of thermal clips and his shields were holding steady. There had been a few tense moments when Garm got too close, but he’d managed to avoid getting grabbed. His leg was sore, but strong. So far.

He put on another burst of speed. Garm’s footsteps faded as he rounded a corner and took the left fork when the alley split off into two paths.

About a hundred feet ahead of him were the abandoned docks for the Diulo District, honeycombed with decaying shacks and old crates. Perfect cover, as long as he could keep moving.

Garrus heard Garm thunder down the wrong path and bellow when Garrus’ scent disappeared. He settled in, back against a crate while he switched to his rifle and checked the clip, and waited while Garm reversed and came down the right path.

_One shot, then move._

As soon as he could hear Garm muttering to himself, he stood up and fired. Garm’s right eye exploded, but the krogan barely flinched. His adrenalin was so high he probably wouldn’t feel anything less than an asteroid being dropped on his head. Garrus didn’t have one of those lying around, so he’d have to settle for more conventional methods.

He rolled out of cover, to Garm’s right, and lined up the next shot. At the last second, he saw an old fuel tank behind Garm, and moved two inches to the left.

 _Please still be full._ He exhaled and squeezed the trigger.

The blast threw him off his feet and destroyed what little cover he had left. His shields screamed a protest, then fizzled out with a crackle of static. Three months of work, fried in an instant. If Garm didn’t kill him, Erash and Weaver would.

He rolled to his side, in time to see Garm take a step toward him. His back was on fire.

“You’re taking too long to die, turian,” Garm groaned, and lurched forward another step. “Say please, and I’ll crush your head now.”

“Thanks,” Garrus coughed. “But I’ve got a date.” He brought the butt of his rifle down and rolled away as fast as he could.

Not fast enough.

His rifle exploded, shrapnel flying out in every direction, some of it slicing through his armor. He hissed as a plate on his chest tore open and a sticky, hot trail of blood spilled past his waist. At least his helmet was still in one piece.

He forced himself to his feet. Garm was down, groaning, bleeding from dozens of holes with his face full of metal, but alive. Garrus pulled out his pistol and limped toward Garm, firing until the gun spat out the clip and only a clicking sound happened when he squeezed the trigger.

Time to go. He’d finish Garm another day.

When he turned around, two krogan blocked his path, and the shadows behind them could only be vorcha.

Garm hadn’t been talking to himself. He’d been calling for help.

 


	10. Chapter 10

"Any more exploding guns?" Garm drawled, like he had all the time in the world now that his buddies had shown up. He was right; he had plenty of time to gloat, but what he didn't know was that despite his name, Archangel was a hell of a liar.

"No," said Garrus, aimed his pistol at Garm, ignoring the agony in his chest. It was a risk to turn his back on the rest of the Blood Pack, but they wouldn't move until Garm gave the word. "But my armor's got a few surprises. Try to get it off me, and we all go up."

Erash had suggested rigging the squad's armor with explosives a long time ago, practically begging Garrus for the chance, but Garrus said no. Too much margin for error, too  _final._  Now, a tiny part of him regretted it.

Garm snorted. "Yeah? What if we don't believe you?" Behind Garrus, the other two krogan shifted uneasily.

"Try me," said Garrus. "You'd be surprised for about half a second before you're shredded. Haven't you learned I'll do whatever it takes to bring you all down?"

When Garm mulled it over, Garrus ran. The two krogan flung themselves away from him.

He couldn't go back to the base until he knew he'd lost them. The wounds on his chest were still bleeding, and one of the krogan got off a shot that clipped him in the leg before he was out of range.

Blood on the streets of Omega. Unless he could hide and get to his medi-gel, they'd sniff him out and make him choke on his own teeth.

Garrus ran faster. Behind him, Garm howled.

***

Half a day. Twelve point five hours. Garrus kept running.

The Blood Pack was never more than a block or two away, and usually much closer. Whenever he had more than a few seconds cobbled together, he sat and checked his clips, and tried to not think about how badly he was bleeding. His body temperature was dropping - not to dangerous levels yet, but the heating coils in his armor had started to kick in. That was a very bad sign.

He didn't waste time cursing his stupidity. Shepard would do that for him, if he ever got home.

"Shepard," he panted. "This was a terrible day for me to leave you behind, and for you to actually listen."

When he eased out of cover and didn't see any Blood Pack in range, he sat down again and considered his options. They were few, and none were appealing. His best bet was Butler - the man was still on Omega, with Nalah, and he would come if Garrus called.

But that would leave a trail, from Archangel to another member of his squad, without any more backup. And that trail would keep going, all the way back to Nalah.

No civilian involvement. That was their rule. He wouldn't call Butler.

"Damn it." He pushed himself up and listened. Something knocked over a trash bin, and he heard a growl that could only come from Garm, telling the clumsy one to be quiet.

Garrus loaded a new thermal clip into his pistol as silently as he could. He was down to his last two.

_Think, Vakarian. You're alone, with two thermal clips left and a pretty impressive case of internal bleeding. The Blood Pack is about to sniff you out. Think, damn it, or they'll eat you alive._

He glanced around. Nothing looked familiar, just the usual assortment of rundown apartments and puddles of dirty water.

_Water._

Hope flared in his chest, hot enough to burn - if he was lucky, very lucky, he might be able to pull this off. Garrus reached down to the spare ammo pouch strapped to his leg, ready for it to be empty, hoping that it wasn't.

The small silver sphere fell easily into his hand, so light it felt like it would shatter if he squeezed it too hard. When he held it up to the light, it glinted.

_Full charge. Thank you, Weaver and Erash._

He limped out into the center of the alley. Garm pointed.

"There he is! Take him down!"

"Careful where you step," Garrus said. "It's very slippery." He pressed the button on the top of the sphere, and threw it as hard as he could.

_Three._

"What are you waiting for? He's right there!"

_Two._

"I'll do it myself!"

_One._

Garrus threw himself around a corner and hunched against the wall. He hoped he was out of the blast radius. Erash hadn't exactly been forthcoming about how far the effects carried.

The sphere exploded.

Every drop of moisture - on the ground, in the air, on exposed skin - instantly flash-boiled. Billows of steam filled the alley, scalding hot, and Garm started to scream.

Garrus gave himself five seconds to catch his breath, and kept running.

***

Shepard was waiting in the tunnels for him, her face tight with worry.

"I'm going to kill you for - oh, Jesus, Garrus!" She ducked under his arm and hauled him into the elevator. "You're a damn idiot, Vakarian. Have I mentioned that?"

"Once or twice," he coughed. "Feel free to mention it again, preferably after I pass out." She tightened her arm around his back.

When they got into the common room, she dropped him on one of the couches and vanished from his line of sight. He heard her rooting around in a drawer and started to laugh, a little unsteadily.

"That had better not be Weaver's stuff, she'll pee on you." Once he started laughing, he couldn't stop.

"Shut up, shut up," muttered Shepard as she came back into view. She fumbled with the clasps of his armor and started yanking pieces away. "Oh, goddammit, that's a lot of blood. That's - Vakarian! Eyes on me!"

He couldn't have disobeyed her if he was dying. There was a very good chance he  _was_ , if all the blue blood staining Shepard's hands was any indication. He locked eyes with her.

"I'm going to roll you over, and it's going to hurt like hell, but I can't stop the bleeding until I know where it's coming from. I don't want you to look anywhere but me. Don't even blink. Just keep your eyes on me, okay?" She didn't wait for his reply before she shoved her arms under him and shoved him onto his back. He couldn't breathe. He hoped Shepard was fast.

Her fingers flew over his back, peeling away the shreds of his undersuit and clearing away the blood. When she pulled out the biggest piece of shrapnel, he bit into the cushion to keep from screaming.

"Must be a mess," he said through a tight throat. "Feels like my plates are broken. Don't know how I managed to make it back."

"Not helping, Vakarian," Shepard snapped. Her hair fell over her face and blocked everything but the curve of her cheek. He watched, fascinated, as his hand reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear. Shepard paused and stared at him, her face stricken.

"Goddammit, Garrus. You -" She pulled herself together with a visible effort, and turned back to his injuries. "Goddammit," she said again.

***

Garrus slept.

Twelve thousand, six hundred and thirty-four breaths later, he woke up. Not that anyone was counting.

***

Except Shepard.

***

Butler called in as soon as the news of the fight hit, swearing vengeance on all involved.

"I'm on my way back now, boss. We'll get the fuckers this time, knock 'em right on their arses."

"Not necessary, Butler, I'm fine." Shepard glared at him. "Enjoy your wife a little longer. I'll be in better shape than ever by the time you're all back." When Butler started shouting, Garrus let out a growl that silenced the man completely. His chest throbbed and he pressed a hand over the worst of the gouges.

"I'm telling you,  _stay._  Or I'll wait till you're on the bridge and I'll blow it to hell."

Butler laughed, a little nervously. "Uh, right-o. See you later. And boss?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't do that again." Butler hung up. Garrus looked up at Shepard and tried to laugh.

"Now he's trying to mother me, too."

Shepard stared at him, eyes glittering, before she whipped around to punch the wall. Her arm sank through the metal without a sound.

"Shepard, don't -" Garrus hissed. She stared at her arm, shaking, and gave him a look of pure contempt before she disappeared.

***

An hour later, Shepard came back and spread more medi-gel on his chest. She wouldn't look at his face, and he didn't try to talk to her. She left again, and Garrus was asleep when she reappeared.

She watched him, rubbing her cheek.

***

He couldn't walk for three days, and spent any waking minutes fielding messages from his squad, all of whom were ready to come back and pound Garm into dust the second Garrus gave them permission.

On the morning of the fourth day, Shepard slung his arm around her shoulders and dragged him up to his - their - room. She dropped him on the bed and walked out, her back stiff with fury. Garrus felt a thin thread of gratitude she was saving the yelling for when he was recovered, but the thread snapped when she stalked back in and dumped the remains of his armor on the floor next to the bed.

"Garm's claiming he killed Archangel," she said, her voice utterly flat. "The whole station is in awe of him. Congratulations. Business for the Blood Pack has skyrocketed now that they took out the Scourge of Omega." She folded her arms. "You're the best recommendation they could have gotten."

Garrus pushed himself up. His chest ached. "That'll change when the squad gets back. We'll get them all this time."

"Really?" Shepard's voice still had no inflection. "You told me Garm knew about Weaver. Have you thought about that? She'll be back in just over a week. You had better believe they're watching for her and anyone she meets up with."

"I'm aware of that. I've got a plan -"

"Oh, good. A  _plan_. Like the  _plan_ that had you facing down the Blood Pack alone?" She kicked what was left of his gauntlets. "I don't have high hopes for your  _plans_  right now, Vakarian. Jesus, Weaver's an idiot teenager and she could have handled that better than you. I thought you were done with this! Barely making it out of the fight with Eclipse wasn't enough?"

Garrus kept his temper in check. For the moment. "So I should have let him just walk away?"

"Yes! And then you follow him, and you  _listen._  You find out where he lives, you find out how many mercs he's got, and then you get your ass home and figure out what to do with the intel. It's called  _recon_ , Vakarian, and it doesn't work when your only approach to a problem is to start shooting."

"I had the chance to take him down, Shepard. I couldn't give that up."

"Then you're going to get yourself killed, and probably the rest of your squad too." Garrus' head jerked up, his teeth bared and a growl rumbling out of him. "Oh, spare me the protective display. If you cared about their safety, you wouldn't have gone after Garm on your own. What if Garm caught you and felt like playing with you for a while?" Shepard's voice went soft. "Could you have kept your mouth shut if they tortured you?" Garrus shuddered and broke away from her gaze.

"What if you led them back here, and they waited for the squad?"

"I wouldn't!" he yelled. Shepard shook her head. His heart pounded.

"You would try," she said, infinitely sad. "You would try and they would kill you when you stayed quiet. Then they would go after the squad."

"Shepard, stop."

"And without you there -"

" _Stop."_

"- they would kill every one of them. I wouldn't be able to help." Shepard kicked a path through his armor and climbed up next to him. He gasped into his hands. She didn't touch him.

"You're responsible for them," she said. "They're your squad. They'll follow you into hell, and they'll fight for you until they're dead. But you have to take care of that loyalty. You have to be smarter."

"How do you do it?" He felt like he was choking. Shepard had scraped him raw. "How do you care so much, and not have it kill you?"

"I'm not the one to ask. It did kill me." She didn't speak until he let his hands fall into his lap. "You wouldn't let your squad pull a stunt like that, would you?"

He shook his head.

"Then you can't do it either. They'll take their lead from you, and if you're not smarter, they won't be. Garrus, Garrus, look at me."

He couldn't. She got up and shut off the lights. The air filling her empty space was the last thing he heard for a long time.

***

_I've thought a lot about what you told me. About not sacrificing innocents to achieve the goal. About finding the best way through, not just the fastest._

_Words mean nothing until you put them into action, Garrus._


	11. Chapter 11

After trying to sleep and failing, Garrus limped downstairs and forced himself to eat. His stomach griped at him, but after a few moments of gripping the edge of the counter and trying not to think about what vomiting would do to his wounds, he kept the food down.

The base was silent. Garrus found Shepard at the foot of the bridge.

"Do you need me to change your bandages?" she asked, keeping her back to him and her voice neutral.

"No."

"Ah." She was quiet for a long time. Neither of them looked at the other.

"Maybe it was a mistake to come back. Or to come at all. What right did I have to come into your life and try to give you advice on how to live? It was selfish of me. I'm sorry."

"I'm not. It was -" He closed his eyes against the memory of the first two months after Alchera. "It was an empty galaxy without you."

"Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. You can't say what we have is healthy. My whole idea of  _home_  is wrapped up in you, and I..." She finally looked at him. "You can't really live or learn with me around. What if you're not the leader you should be because I'm hanging around and throwing off some balance?"

"I'm alive because you saved me."

"What if that's all I was supposed to do? Save you, and move on?"

"No. If you're trying to say this last year was a mistake - no. Twelve people are alive because of you. Not to mention everyone we've been able to help." He cupped her chin, careful with his talons. "You were right. They're my responsibility. I gave them this mission. It's on me if they fail." He let go of her chin and ran his fingers through her hair. She leaned up into his touch. "I'm ready to listen now."

"To what?"

"Whatever you have to say. Come home." He turned around and went back into the base.

She was waiting for him when he limped up to his room. Garrus tried to read forgiveness in her posture, but Shepard, if she had any tells to begin with, wasn't telegraphing them now.

"What I said, how I said it..."

"You meant all of it, Shepard. Don't try to go back on it now."

"I did. And I'm so mad at you I could make what you've got under those bandages look like rug burn. That's not what matters. You're alive. I'm here. We can fight about this forever, or -"

"Or I can finally listen to you, and figure out how to run my squad the right way."

Shepard gave him a tiny, hard-won smile. "It couldn't hurt. I do have some experience, you know."

"So you're what, my spiritual advisor?"

"...that is a  _terrible_ pun, Garrus."

"I'm just surprised it took me this long to use it. And it did the job. You're not angry anymore."

She huffed. "Don't push your luck. Now get into bed, I want to check your bandages."

* * *

Garrus fell asleep almost right away, soothed by Shepard's hands on his chest. The last thing he felt as he drifted off was her kiss, cool and clean, like the first autumn chill.

* * *

While he slept, Shepard's chest ached and throbbed once, like her heart was trying to remember how to beat.

She stayed very still. It didn't happen again.

* * *

When he woke up, there was music playing.

"Good morning, starshine. The Earth says hello." Shepard spun in his chair. Her mood was calm, a clear lake without ripples. He flexed his mandibles, wondering if he should ask for a better translation before he decided to rely on context clues. The greeting was...affectionate. Comfortable.  _Human._ He tucked it away for later.

She put the datapad she was reading on the top of the stack. "How'd you sleep?"

"Too well. My body will think it deserves this much if you let me keep it up." He stretched experimentally and felt his plates flex against the bandages. He groaned when a muscle in his back knotted. Healing was going to take time, even with the medi-gel and plenty of rest, and he'd forgotten the toll the fight with Garm had taken on the rest of his body. His leg tingled; Shepard had reapplied the medi-gel there too.

"I'd wake you if there was anything interesting." She cocked her head at the comm. "Even the mercs are taking a break now that they think Archangel's dead. Checked all the channels and no one's planning anything."

"Maybe they changed channels."

"No one has any reason now their number one enemy is gone. Feel like eating?"

Garrus sat up. The muscle in his back twinged again, but he couldn't reach it.

"Something bugging you?" Shepard sat down next to him. She eased a hand under his shirt. "Let me guess - right here?"

He sighed. "It's scary how you just know. Convenient, though."

Shepard dug her knuckles into the seam between his plates. The ache flared into real pain. He hissed in a breath and forced himself to stay relaxed as Shepard worked into the muscle. The knot loosened and cool relief spread across his back.

"Better?"

"Much."

She hummed, a habit she had picked up from him that put warmth in his gut whenever she did it. The music kept playing.

"What are you listening to?"

"Just some random channel. Someone's listening to love songs down by the loading docks."

"This is a love song? Sounds like a lullaby."

Shepard pushed him back down on the bed. "Maybe to a turian, but this version of the song was  _huge_  back on Earth just before I joined the N7 program. Every guy I knew used it to try and get lucky. Two hundred years old and it's still popular." She stretched out next to him and hummed along.

Garrus yawned. He should be getting up, getting dressed, but he couldn't seem to make himself move.

"All right, time for all vigilantes to wake up, even the injured ones. It's past 0900." Shepard stroked his neck. He opened one eye.

"That's counter-productive if you want me out of bed," he grumbled. She brushed her hand over his waist, just enough pressure to make his eyes close.

"When did I ever say I wanted you out of bed? Pretty big assumption to make. You're still convalescing, after all." She pulled herself up to straddle his waist. "I think we should take advantage of the quiet," she said, her voice as close to a purr as a human could get.

Somewhere in the next few minutes, Shepard's shirt migrated to the floor, followed by Garrus'. She ran her nails over the surface of his carapace, idle little circles and whorls. Neither of them wanted to hurry.

"How are you healing? I did what I could with medi-gel, but I have no idea if this is what you're supposed to look like." She traced the raw, purpled end of one wound where it escaped the bandage.

"You can relax, Shepard. I'm healing fine." He hissed when her fingers came too close. "Careful. Having these reopen would be a damper on the festivities." The painkillers had worn off and his chest throbbed. He wanted to move, to  _touch_ , but even lifting his arms sent waves of fire over his carapace.

"Sorry."

"It's fine." He plucked at the strap of her bra. "Can you -"

"What? Can't handle a bra clasp?"

"Not without omni-gel," he said, and nipped at her neck. "Please, I want to see you."

"Limited mobility's a bitch, isn't it?"

"Shepard _._ "

Something in his voice made her shiver and she reached around her back. Her hands twisted, but she didn't pull her bra away. Instead, she cocked her head and smiled a very familiar smile down at him.

"Oh no, I know that look, nothing good ever comes from that look."

"That hurts, Garrus." She slid the straps of her bra down her arms, but kept her breasts covered. "I was  _planning_  to be generous."

"How generous?" he asked as he traced her ribs with a talon. Her waist was firm under his hands.

"I was  _going_  to let you stare at all my soft, helpless human bits and make whatever smartass comments you wanted before I showed you why soft, helpless bits are so attractive. But I think I'll skip right to the demonstration."

"Demonstration - aah, Shepard, careful, I can't move that easily."

She looked up from where she was undoing the clasps on his trousers. "You're not going to be moving at all, Garrus. I just need a little room."

"Room for what? I thought this was supposed to be a punishment."

Shepard arched an eyebrow, and the smile slipped across her mouth again. "You'll see." She finished with the clasps on his trousers and moved on to her own tossed her bra to the side, but before he had more than a glimpse of her breasts, she was undoing the buttons on her pants.

"Shepard?"

She didn't answer, and her hair almost hid her smirk. He brushed it out of her face and behind her ears, the gesture already achingly familiar. She tugged her pants down over her hips and off, to join her bra, shirt, and boots on the floor. After a pause, she rolled her shoulders back and stretched. When he opened his mouth, not sure what he was going to say, but knowing he should say  _something_ , she pressed a finger to his mouth, still smirking.

"Not a word. Got it?" He nodded, shifting to accommodate his plates as they began to spread. Shepard glanced down and lost the battle with her smirk, which turned into a smug grin.

"I've heard that it takes a lot of coaxing to get a turian male ready," she said, and let her finger fall from his mouth to his waist. "But the best way to start is..." She traced the seam of his sheath lightly, just enough pressure for a shiver to run through him. "Like this."

Every other time he'd gotten off on Omega, it had been perfunctory - one more ritual to get out of the way before he moved on to more important things. Quiet, quick sessions in the shower, or when he couldn't sleep and Shepard was gone. He'd been taking care of physical requirements, nothing more.

Shepard bent her head. Against all reason, her mouth was still warm.

* * *

Five minutes after he came, he was asleep.

"Typical male," Shepard groused when he woke up. " _Typical._ "

"It's not like I could help it," he protested sleepily. "And it's all your fault."

"Blaming the woman.  _Also_  typical." But she looked pleased with herself again. While he slept, she'd cleaned herself off and pulled on her shirt. She laid down next to him.

"How're you feeling?"

"Surprisingly good, considering. Another few days, and I'll be as good as new." He gave her a sly look and a purr. "Though I have a whole new set of reasons to stay in bed now." She laughed and wriggled closer.

"Oh yeah? Good to know my skills made an impression."

"About that. Do you want me to...?" He gestured at her body and she slapped his hand away.

"Time's passed. And  _don't_  start apologizing. I'll be reliving the look on your face when I finally let you come for... well, forever. Better than an orgasm."

He sighed. "So now what? I'm awake and completely at your mercy."

Shepard pressed closer. "This is fine. Just being quiet, here with you. Unless there's something else you'd rather be doing."

"Not a chance. This is good."

Shepard hummed happily, her throat vibrating against his carapace. "It is."

* * *

At some point, Shepard gave Garrus more painkillers and pulled off the bandages to check how he was healing. She must have been satisfied; she nodded and layered on more medi-gel. Between the painkillers and the gel, everything was blurry and muted and he couldn't keep his mouth shut.

"Hair is weird."

Shepard pressed her lips together and kept her eyes on his carapace. "Is it?" she asked.

"It's soft, but it's not like fur. But it's not like feathers either."

"Garrus, are you  _high_?"

He considered. "Probably," he said. "If I am it's your fault. And I'm still right, hair is weird."

"Okay, time for a nap." She stroked his neck with her fingers. "I promise not to get you stoned next time you have to take your meds."

"Weird isn't bad," he protested. "Your hair is a good weird. But what's really weird are those marks on your face. Frickles."

" _Freckles_ , Garrus."

He waved a hand. "Fine,  _freckles._  But why? They're not camouflage, they're just decoration. It's not like you humans don't have enough evolutionary disadvantages. No armor. No internal heat sources. How do you survive as a species?"

Shepard was fighting a losing battle against a smile. "Remind me to tell you about what human females go through during puberty," she said. "Then you'll understand why we've basically flipped off evolutionary logic for the past few thousand years."

"Okay," he sighed. "But I mean it. Your hair is a good weird. Can I touch it?"

Shepard laughed. "After what we just did? You don't need to ask to touch my  _hair,_  but go ahead."

Carefully, because his arms felt like wet ropes instead of bone and muscle, Garrus ran his fingers through her hair. It was soft and cool, almost slippery. He tucked it back behind her ears and brushed a knuckle against her lips.

"Good weird," he said again, around a thick tongue. "Time to sleep. Come here." Shepard curled against him obediently, not protesting when he slid an arm under her and tucked her into his side.

* * *

"You stayed the whole time I was sleeping?"

Shepard nodded. "You've got quite a grip, Garrus."

"But why didn't you just...go?"

She rubbed her thumb against the tip of his mandible. "Could have, but I didn't want to miss any more world-shattering revelations like  _hair is weird_. I'm going to get that on a t-shirt."

"It'll sell very well on Palaven."

"Noted." Shepard swung to the floor. "We've been lazy too long," she said. "Not that I regret it, but I should see how Garm's doing. Time to see what a boiled krogan looks like."

"Is it too much to hope he's died of his wounds?" Garrus rubbed his eyes. They felt gritty and sore.

"Probably. I'll be back." She kissed his mandible and left with the familiar rush of air.

Garrus stayed in bed until his stomach and bladder forced him out. He showered and changed the bandages on his carapace. Even the worst of the wounds had healed. Shepard might have had a future as a medic, he thought to himself, but decided not to mention it.

In the common room, a fine layer of dust gathered on Weaver's workbench and the tables - more signs of how lifeless the base was without the squad.

He had just over a week to figure out how to get Weaver back to Omega without the Blood Pack knowing. His original plan - if it could be called a plan - to meet Weaver at the docks in full armor and shoot anyone who came within five feet was worthless. Time to be smarter.

He could tell her not to come back, but Weaver wouldn't listen. Her loyalty to the squad - not to mention her loyalty to Sensat and Grundan - meant she would come no matter what was waiting for her.

Garrus had been the one to let her join. She was his to protect, especially from his own stupidity. She was safer with the squad.

He tapped his talons on the table. With no one but Shepard around, he'd stopped wearing gloves and the sound was strangely satisfying in the quiet that surrounded him.

_Think, Vakarian. Find the best way through, not the fastest._

His gaze slid over the shelves at the back of the room, where the squad stored leftovers from their fights. None of it was particularly useful: a shotgun with such a powerful recoil not even Butler could use it, a piece of bone that Vortash claimed was part of a kakliosaur fossil, a quarian's suit, unpunctured but still useless -

 _That_  had been a fight: Zel'Aenik nar Helash had gone on Pilgrimage, and decided to go crazy at the end instead of home. At some point, she became a viral specialist and decided "serial killer" was what she wanted to be when she grew up.

It took two weeks to track her to her lab in the slums down in the Jakartil District. Zel screamed about liquifying their brains until Grundan got bored and shattered her faceplate with a concussive round. Exposure alone wouldn't have killed her, or at least not quickly enough for Garrus. He'd been sick for days, some awful cough that came with a fever, runny eyes, and a swollen waist. He was miserable, and after everything Zel had done, he wanted to see her suffer.

"I am still superior!" she had shrieked as he approached. "I have filled the air with my creations! None shall escape my work! All Omega shall breathe the fire of my genius!"

Garrus hated serial killers on the best of days, but he hated the ones with megalomaniac leanings most. Before he could put a bullet in Zel's head and shut her up for good, a cough boiled out of him, wet and clotted with mucus.

Before he could turn his head, he coughed in Zel's face, just as she opened her mouth to keep screaming. The quarian froze, eyes wide and glassy, and her entire body spasmed once before going limp. She let out a shuddering moan as a thin rill of pinkish blood spilled out of her mouth and onto the floor.

Garrus counted to ten.

"I think she's dead," said Sidonis. "Nice, boss."

"That was  _awesome_ ," said Weaver, who looked grossed out and delighted about equally.

 _Coughed someone to death_ , Garrus thought, back in the present.  _I don't think that'll be recorded in the histories, unless Sidonis makes good on his promise to write ours. So now we have a quarian's suit, but no quarians on the squad. The only thing worth salvaging was the tactical cloak upgrade to the omni-tool, no idea how Zel managed to afford -_

A small supernova blossomed in his head. He grabbed a blank datapad from the table and started to type.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! An extra-long chapter this week. Enjoy, my lovelies!

Shepard didn’t say anything for a long time after Garrus finished outlining the plan.

“Come on, Shepard. I’m asking for your opinion. If it’s terrible, I want to know.”

She rubbed her eyes. Garrus wondered how many of her gestures were habits she recreated after her death, or if they were bred into her, deeper than muscle or bone.

“It’s not terrible,” she said. “It’s... clever. Careful.”

“Thought you’d like that,” said Garrus. He couldn’t stop a note of reproach from slipping into his voice. If Shepard noticed, she didn’t say anything.

“Too bad these upgrades are so expensive you can’t outfit the whole squad. It’ll come in handy.” She turned the omni-tool over and handed it back to him. “Have you talked to Butler yet?”

Garrus shook his head. “We’re touching base in an hour. He won’t be happy about it, but there’s no way around it. I’ll brief the squad together afterwards. So if you have any other suggestions, now’s the time, Shepard.”

She handed the datapad back to him. “You’ll have the advantage of surprise, but once the mercs figure out it’s you -- and they will -- they’ll be even more vicious than before. You made it personal with Garm. They won’t give you a chance to hesitate. Once you commit --”

“-- we’re in it till the end.” Garrus reached out and squeezed her hand. “I want you with me, Shepard, on my six.”

She kissed him, briefly, fiercely.

***

Garrus timed his call so Butler wouldn’t have time to argue before the rest of the squad joined in.

“This is not negotiable, Butler.”

“No fuckin’ way, boss.” Butler’s face was red, his scars stark white. “No fuckin’ way, she’s not goin’ anywhere. Nalah stays with me.”

“It’s not safe anymore. Nalah needs to get off Omega,” said Garrus, as patiently as he could. “And before you ask, she’s not coming to the base. We’re not involving civilians.”

“She wouldn’t have t’ fight! She’s a damn good nurse, a damn sight better than Ripper. We could use her.” Butler pressed his fist to his mouth, breathing hard. Garrus waited. Shepard leaned against his back and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Dammit, boss. I knew this would come, but -- it isn’t easy. Nalah’s my whole world.” Butler looked away. “If something happens to her...”

“We’re doing this so nothing will,” said Garrus. “You told me she has family on the Citadel. She won’t be alone, and when we’re done here, you’ll join her.”

Butler sighed, like a stormy wind. “Right-o. You want me to tell her now, or wait till after the chat with the squad?”

“After.” Garrus’ omni-tool pinged as Erash called in. “All right, let’s do this.”

***

Grundan shook his head. “Boss, this is _huge._ We’ve had big ops before, but nothing on this scale.”

“We can handle it.” Garrus’ throat ached. It had taken twenty minutes to get the squad to listen to the plan, and then another hour to outline and refine it. He hadn’t talked this much in years. Shepard cupped his mandible against her palm. Halfway through the brief, she climbed over the back of the couch and dropped into his lap. Garrus couldn’t help feeling exposed, like the whole squad could see her, He knew better, and having her so close was the best cure for the tension that had built up during the conversation. Just her touch on his face relaxed muscles he hadn’t even known were tight.

“Weaver, are you paying attention?”

She jumped and nodded. “Yeah, sorry. Just a little freaked out. It’s not like I’m used to anyone except you guys knowing who I am.”

“Take it as a compliment, and a warning,” he told her. “All right, I’m going to go over the plan one more time, and then it’s radio silence unless there’s a problem.”

In two days, Butler would leave for the Citadel with Nalah. They would visit her family, then Butler would hand off Zel’Aenik’s omni-tool -- tactial cloak upgrade included -- to Weaver. A little tinkering -- barely enough to keep Weaver occupied on the shuttle ride to Omega -- and any scans that picked up the cloak would only register a quarian arriving on the station. Once they arrived, Butler would head back to his apartment, and Weaver would take one of the squad’s hidden routes to the base. The tactical cloak would only be deactivated once she was inside and the base locked down.

That was half of the plan.

The rest depended on how pissed Garrus could manage to get the mercs on Omega. After he found out that Eclipse was expecting a shipment of tainted eezo the day before Butler and Weaver’s flight back, he knew he could manage it easily.

Everyone else would filter back in ones and twos once Butler was off Omega. The day before Butler and Weaver came back, the squad would split into two groups. The first -- Melanis, Grundan and Erash -- would disrupt the shipment’s arrival with a few well-placed tripwires and explosives, and then very obviously make a run for it. When Eclipse followed, the decoy squad would lead them to where the second group waited. Once the mercs were in the kill zone, the rest of the squad would open fire from their well-hidden sniper’s perches.

Clean, surgical, and precise. The cross-fire would take out most of the mercs, and the ones that lived would carry back the news that Archangel was still very much alive.

Even if none of the mercs survived, it’d be clear who had led the attack. It was an _elegant_ solution. The other two merc gangs would turn on the Blood Pack, furious at Garm’s lie, and the resulting inter-gang violence would keep all eyes off the docks while Weaver and Butler arrived.

“We can do this,” Garrus told them again, after he asked for questions and no one had any. “We can strike this blow and get everyone home safe.” He took his time meeting everyone’s eyes. No one looked away. “Everyone,” he said. “We all come home. Got it?”

The squad nodded.

“See you in a few days.” It was impossible not to let his pride show in his voice. There was no reason to say what came into his head next, but it felt like a talisman against what they were about to face.

“Good hunting.”

“Good hunting,” they answered.

***

With radio silence in place and Shepard patrolling nearly every minute Garrus was awake, the last few days before the squad returned were lonely ones. He had plenty of time for thinking while his injuries healed.

Garrus wasn’t one for introspection. Once he committed to a plan of action, he saw it through, and dealt with the consequences later. That way of approaching conflict had taken a few hits, courtesy of Shepard, but he was finally able to look at himself honestly.

It hurt.

He knew his flaws, well enough to operate around them, but the one flaw he’d never been able to escape was the way every failure became personal. Some child slaver ran before Garrus could catch him? It was because Garrus didn’t move fast enough. Two more duct rat bodies? Garrus couldn’t find them a safe place to sleep. One more woman with her eye swollen shut, too scared to name her abuser? Garrus couldn’t convince her that he’d keep her safe.

Failure tasted like bitter ash, even in memory. No wonder he had chased down Saleon so single-mindedly. Anything to get rid of that taste.

And then Shepard came, with her rules just as rigid as the ones in C-Sec, but tempered by a unfailing morality. She wasn’t afraid to wield mercy like a weapon, and that realization -- that kindness could be just as effective as violence -- had shaken him to his marrow.

Not that she wasn’t flawed -- she was impatient, and used her intellect like a whip when someone bored her. Anyone not quick enough to match her wits got trampled underfoot, something Garrus had experienced as a witness, not a victim. She usually chose Pressly or Kaidan for that.

Shepard wasn’t one for introspection either. Maybe that was why she took such time with him, a turian with a short temper and grease-covered hands, with wicked aim and a mouth to match hers. It wasn’t hard to imagine she saw a younger version of herself in him, with the fire he hadn’t yet learned to control. She had taken responsibility for him.

Garrus closed his hands into fists. She was still taking responsibility for him, even now.

Or was that just a last hope, born out of the need to have some part of her remain after her life flared out over Alchera?

He never let that train of thought develop, stamped it down ruthlessly whenever it tried to make an appearance, but he had nothing better to do, and no reason to not face it. Was she here? Or had the past fourteen months been an elaborate fantasy?

The chances were good he should leave this potential fissure alone. If he really had gone crazy when Shepard died, wasn’t this benevolent insanity better than what would happen if he gave it up?

_Does it matter? One way or another, I’m here, I’m still alive, and I’m doing good work. Who cares if I’m crazy as long as I do the right thing, the right way?_

“Garrus?” Shepard appeared in front of him, more uncertain than he’d ever seen her. He could only imagine what his subvocals had sounded like. “Everything all right?”

Of course she would come now, as he debated her existence and wondered if her touch was just him grasping for something he never imagined wanting while she was alive. He smiled, and watched the tension fade out of her shoulders.

_I don’t care if I’m crazy,_ Garrus thought as Shepard pulled him to his feet and up the stairs, murmuring about checking his bandages. _My squad is strong. My rifle is just an extension of my arm. And I’m happy._

_I’m actually happy._

***

Garrus called his family the next day. It didn’t go the way he expected.

He blamed his suddenly optimistic outlook. The squad was planning their biggest operation yet, guaranteed to piss off every merc on Omega at once, and he was either crazy or being haunted by his old commander,  -- but what he realized the night before was true: he _was_ happy.

A year and more had gone by since he’d last talked to his family; Solana cried when he told her he was leaving the Citadel again but wouldn’t tell her where, and his mother went rigid and quiet.

“Call us when you can,” was the last thing she said before cutting off the call.

He punched in the call, hoping his mother would answer, and nearly disconnected when his father’s face filled the screen.

“What -- Garrus.” Thrace Vakarian settled back in his chair. Garrus felt a familiar thread of apprehension slide through him, sharp and cold as a needle, as his father scrutinized him. “Don’t need money, do you?”

Garrus coughed and tried not to look down. “Ah, no.”

“You’re not in trouble, are you?” Thrace swirled something amber-colored in a heavy glass.

_I’m on Omega. “Trouble” doesn’t begin to cover it_ , Garrus thought wryly. “Not any more than usual,” he answered. “I just wanted to check in. It’s been a while.”

“Interesting definition of ‘a while’, Garrus,” said Thrace. “But far be it from me to argue over details.”

“You’re joking. You love arguing over details.” Garrus froze. “I mean, ah --”

Thrace chuckled and drained half his glass. “No, you’re right. It’s what made me a good investigator for C-Sec.” He lifted his browplates. “Something you’ve apparently given up on. Care to tell me why?”

“Dad, I didn’t call to get into a fight.”

“I’m not trying to provoke one. Humor me.” Thrace set his glass to the side and wove his fingers through each other. “The last time we talked, you had just taken a leave of absence to go follow that human Spectre around. Then your sister and mother get a call, you tell them you’ve _quit_ C-Sec and you’ve got another job, but you won’t say what or where. It’s not like you to keep secrets.”

“No, that was always Solana’s job.” Garrus sighed. “If I could tell you, I would.”

“Not some suicide mission, is it?” When Garrus paused, Thrace laughed, a dry sound like the rustling of dead leaves. “I see. You can’t tell me. Listen, son --”

“Dad, I really can’t tell you,” Garrus interrupted, unexpectedly warm. It had been a long time since his father had called him _son._ “I’m sorry. It’s better if I don’t.”

Thrace leaned forward. “You mean it’s _safer_ if you don’t. I’m not a fool, Garrus. Just retired.”

“Fine. It’s safer.” They were both silent for a while. Garrus could hear the wind in the rocks behind the house, and a wave of homesickness passed through him. He missed the wind, and the long dusks stretching into cool, velvet-black nights. No matter how hot the days were on Palaven, the heat left the rocks an hour after the sun went down. Sometimes, there was frost on the windows when he woke up.

“Garrus? Son?”

He looked up guiltily. “Sorry. Just thinking about home.” Before Thrace could say anything else, Garrus kept talking. “How is everyone? Mom? Solana?”

Thrace gazed at him steadily before sighing. “We’re all fine,” he said, finally. Garrus relaxed. “Solana’s got a job offer on Ilium, running security for some asari business maven. Something Dantius. She can’t decide if she wants it or not and it’s driving me crazy. Listening to her go back and forth is putting cracks in my fringe.”

“Nassana Dantius?” asked Garrus, with a cold feeling in his stomach.

“That’s the one. Pays well, too well, if you ask me.” Thrace huffed. “If you’re making that much money, you tend not to ask questions about what you’re told to do.”

“Tell her not to take the job,” said Garrus. Thrace stared at him for a long time before nodding and picking up his glass. He drained the rest in a swallow.

“It's lucky your mother’s not here. She’d yell till your eyes bled about letting her worry this long, and then spend an hour telling you about how the Kovalans’ son just got promoted at C-Sec.”

“Paralus Kovalan? That asshole?” Garrus couldn’t stop the words before they escaped. Thrace laughed and tried to take another drink before he remembered his glass was empty.

“Yes, _that_ asshole. Senior investigator asshole now. He’s really not that terrible, once you get to know him.”

“I went through service with him. He’s never not going to be an asshole. I don’t have room to talk but he’s got a bastard of a bad temper.”

Thrace laughed again. “He does, but he loves his rules. I think that’s why your mother likes him so much. She’s gotten more conservative in her old age. Inflexible. I think that whole thing with the geth rattled her pretty badly, and you know she hates to be rattled.” Thrace tapped his glass with a talon. It was still a surprise to see his father without gloves, and out of a C-Sec uniform. “It’s made her a bit more...combative, than usual”

“Combative? What do you mean?”

“She forgot one of your cousin’s birthday celebrations a few weeks ago. When I reminded her, she shouted for ten minutes. Nothing too unusual, but it’s not like your mother to forget anything.” Before Garrus could ask anything else, Thrace waved a hand in the air and leaned back in his chair. “It’s nothing to worry about. You know your mother, never likes to hear when she’s wrong”

Garrus nodded. He wanted to push for more information, but he knew the set of his father’s mandibles. No matter what he said, he wasn’t going to get any more information.

_If there was something to worry about, he’d tell me_ , Garrus thought. _I need to trust him._

“I should let you go,” said Thrace, interpreting Garrus’ silence as a hint to wind down the conversation. Garrus tried to protest, but Thrace waved it away. “Besides, I’m all dry and talking is thirsty work.” He wrapped his hands around his glass and met Garrus’ eyes. “It was good to hear from you. Don’t let so much time go by before you call again.” His eyes glittered. “It’ll have to be you that calls, since I know better than to ask for a way to get in touch with you.”

“Heh. Right.” Garrus’ throat creaked when he tried to talk. “Dad, I --”

“Later,” said Thrace stiffly. “There’ll be time. Call soon and I’ll make sure you get to talk to your mother too. Be safe.”

“No promises,” Garrus said. “But I’ll do my best.”

“Only thing I ever expected of you.” Thrace, true to form, hung up before Garrus could say goodbye.

“Always needs to get the last word,” Garrus grumbled, trying to ignore the cold feeling that hadn’t left the pit of his stomach.

“Good to know you came by it honestly,” said Shepard. She smirked when he jumped.

“Shepard, how long were you watching?”

“Just the last few minutes. It was touching, really. Now I see why you’re such a caring and sharing individual.” She cocked her head at him, smiling. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “They’re all good. See anything interesting while you were out?”

If she had other questions, Shepard kept them to herself, recognizing his change of subject as a line she shouldn’t cross. At least, not then.

“Nothing terribly interesting. Aria’s girlfriend just left her. Three guesses why and the first two don’t count.”

“Let me think. Irreconcilable differences?”

“Bingo. But here’s the twist -- she’s still here. Told Aria she was leaving, but halfway to the docks, she vanished into one of the tunnels. Moved so fast I could barely track her.” Shepard sat down next to him and leaned in. “I like her. You should try to recruit her. The squad could always use another turian.”

Garrus pressed his forehead to her temple. “Let’s get everyone home first before we think about expanding.”

Home. There was no wind on Omega, and the temperature never varied. It was where he lived, nothing more. Palaven wasn’t home any longer either, as much as he missed the sun-warmed rocks, the hot, sleepy afternoons, and the feel of cool tiles under his bare feet.

_Home_. Its meaning had changed irrevocably. For better or worse, _home_ was a ghost.

***

“Well, looks like the break treated you well,” said Garrus.

“Speak for yourself, boss,” Vortash grumbled, and vanished up the stairs.

“The way I hear it, he took a few shots of ryncol and hit on Melanis,” Sidonis told Garrus, his mandibles trembling on the edge of a smile. “Then, when she went to the bathroom, he started hitting on Mierin. Too drunk to tell the difference. They dumped him at a hotel and went home with a bunch of krogan.”

Garrus snorted and tried to cover it with a cough.

Shepard elbowed him in the side. “I would have paid to see the look on his face the next morning,” she said thoughtfully. “If we could bottle that much rage, we could wipe out evil in the entire galaxy, not just Omega.”

He stepped on her foot. Shepard barely flinched. She would get her revenge later, painfully, but he was too relieved that almost everyone had made it back home safely. In two days, Butler and Weaver would be back, and the adrenalin in his bloodstream would drop to normal levels.

“All right, listen up!” he yelled. Everyone stopped talking and looked at him. Vortash leaned over the balcony to listen. “We’ve got less than twenty hours till we hit that Eclipse shipment. You’re all wired and -- yes, Erash, you included -- and I want everyone to get at least six hours’ of sleep. No excuses. If you think you can trick me and use stims, you’re sadly mistaken.”

“God, I love it when you take charge,” said Shepard. “Maybe I should let you boss me around next time.”

Garrus ignored her. She sat down at Weaver’s workbench and leaned back. Her shirt rode up, exposing a thin, pale strip of belly. He looked away.

“I’m dividing you into two groups. Sensat, Monteague, Grundan, and Mierin in the first group, Melanis, Vortash, Sidonis, Ripper, and Erash in the second. First group, you’re on guard duty or you’re in the practice range for the next six hours. Second group, go grab some bunk time.I’ve sent the schedule to your omni-tools so you’ll know when to switch. These are the groups you’ll be with when we move out tomorrow. Sidonis, you’ll lead the second squad.”

“What about you?” asked Sidonis. “You’re more healed than we thought you’d be after Garm tried to turn you inside out, boss, but even you have to relax sometime.”

“Not something he needs to worry about,” said Shepard. When Garrus glanced over at her, she was innocently examining her fingernails. She shifted and the cut of her hipbone was briefly visible. He gritted his teeth. “I’ll make sure you’re plenty relaxed, Garrus.”

_Not like this, you won’t_ , he thought. By the way she grinned, he wondered if she could read his mind.

“I’ll sleep when the first group does, but thanks for your concern, Sidonis. I’m touched. Always nice to know I’m appreciated.”

Mierin snorted and started to unpack her rifle. “He’s not concerned, boss, he’s lazy. If anything happens to you, he’d have to get used to a whole new leadership style.”

Garrus cut them off before Sidonis could start protesting. “As amusing as it is to listen to you try, none of you are comedians. You know your assignments -- move!”

“That’s it, just like that,” Shepard gave him a dreamy little smile. “Order me around and I’ll be putty in your hands.”

“Not helping,” he hissed on the way to the practice range. His rifle was already unpacked and waiting for him. Shepard only shrugged when he glanced at her.

Mierin and Sensat trailed in, arguing over something that he didn’t hear, because Shepard bent down and kissed him as he knelt in his sniper’s crouch.

***

“Have you heard from Weaver?” Sensat asked for the third time in an hour. “Or Butler?” he added belatedly.

Garrus tried not to let his frustration show. “Not since the last time I answered this question. I won’t until they’re boarding their shuttle from the Citadel to Illium, where they’ll book passage to Omega. Now suit up, we move in thirty.”

Sensat nodded and unknotted his fingers. Garrus watched him go, noting the way anxiety had tightened the salarian’s back until it was ramrod straight.

“I can’t wait till we’re all back together,” he said to Shepard once Sensat was out of earshot. She looked up from checking his new armor. The squad had brought it back with them, and presented it to him with more fanfare than he thought he deserved. It was a rich blue, with a gold bird-of-prey emblem on the arm, with black trim and a black undersuit. He told Shepard he thought they’d spent too much, but she only smiled at him, the slow, private smile she started using after That Night.

_That Night._ He let himself shiver at the memory. With Shepard spending most of every day patrolling, there hadn’t been a chance for a repeat performance. He had a few selfish reasons for wanting the squad back.

“Me neither,” said Shepard. “It doesn’t feel right without everyone here. Just a few more hours.” She smoothed her hands over the collar of his chestpiece and stepped away. “I can’t believe I’m actually jealous of a turian’s armor, but damn, if that isn’t gorgeous. Hurry up and put it on so I can objectify you.”

He obeyed, slowly, relishing the chance to tease her for once. Shepard leaned back on his desk and watched without blinking. He caught himself preening under her gaze, his neck warming when she laughed.

_Never heard her laugh this much when she was alive_ , he thought, and by the way her laughter faltered, she was thinking the same thing. The moment was gone before it could ruin their mood. She crossed the room and stood on tiptoes to touch her forehead to his.

“Ready?” he asked. The squad was already down in the common room, talking quietly, checking mods. Shepard nodded and reached behind her to hand him his rifle.

“Where do you want me?”

“On the perimeter, until the Eclipse mercs are in range. Then I need you behind them, watching for reinforcements.”

“Keep moving, call out strays or any nasty surprises. Got it.” She tilted her head at the door. “Let’s go muster the troops.”

***

“Decoy squad, report.”

“We’re in position. No sign of Eclipse yet, but Grundan’s hacked into their comm channel and they’re on their way. They’ve got no idea what’s about to happen.”

“Let’s keep it that way. Get the tripwires placed and get to cover. The smugglers’ ship just docked. Won’t be long now.”

“Copy that, boss.”

Garrus gave Shepard a nod. She disappeared with something that looked like a heat shimmer. He rose out of cover to glance at the opposite balcony. Sidonis’ helmet eased up over the top of a crate, and nodded once.

“Check your clips,” Garrus murmured into the secure channel. “We get one shot at this.”

“First person who forgets to reload has to clean the showers for a week,” said Sidonis. A babble of nervous laughter came over the comms.

“Quiet,” Garrus hissed. Once the laughter died, he let his subvocals rumble a challenge. “Fifty credits says it’s you, Sidonis.”

“All right boss, you’re on.”

“Heads up, Eclipse mercs on approach!” said Mierin. “About to hit the charges, in three, two, one -- mark.”

Garrus heard the distant explosion and the screams of the mercs. He counted silently; over the comms, he heard Grundan counting too.

When he hit five, Mierin shouted, “Boss, we’re clear!” and threw herself behind a half-built wall, with Erash and Grundan close on her heels.

Garrus spun out of cover and sighted his first target: a salarian, its shields crackling. He fired.

“Headshot!”

“Get some new lines, boss!” Ripper yelled over the comms. “We’re sick of your usuals!”

“Says the man who thinks _get ripped_ is a decent catchphrase,” retorted Melanis. “Not one to judge, _Ripper._ ”

“Enough with the banter, people, keep shooting!” Garrus yelled as he picked off another merc. The Eclipse were trying to regain some kind of order, but with gunfire coming at them from above and from almost every angle, there wasn’t much they could do except scream in frustration while they waited their turn to get blown away.

It was just what Garrus needed to get rid of that lingering bad taste the last big fight with Eclipse had left in his mouth. Every time he shot another engineer, he felt his mandibles flare wider, until it was actually painful to keep grinning.

Two of the vanguards tried to Charge the decoy squad, but Mierin sent a Singularity at them so quickly that Garrus barely registered her movement. Melanis picked them off with an utterly chilling, gleeful laugh.

“Thanks, Mie -- blue warrior goddesses forever!”

“ _Stop talking and shoot!”_ Garrus shouted. _“You’re not comedians!”_

“You’re still laughing,” said Sensat, as he Cryo’d a merc before shattering its leg with a single shot.

Garrus was about to reply when he saw the telltale shimmer at his side and felt the distant pressure of a hand on his arm..

“You’re about to run out of targets,” said Shepard, her voice audible through his helmet. “I scouted two hundred meters down the corridor. There’s no one coming. They didn’t even get a chance to call their base. Finish up here, and you’re done.”

“This is the last of them, make it count!”

The answering roar of gunfire was deafening, a grinding feedback loop. The last Eclipse holdouts tried to fight back, but they couldn’t get a bead on any of the squad from where they were trapped in the killzone.

It took less than thirty seconds to finish off the mercs. One of the vanguards’ barriers was still shrieking when Garrus vaulted down from cover and landed next to her body. He shot her again, just to get a little silence.

“All right, you know the drill. Grab anything that looks valuable or useful. We’re out of here in five.”

The squad scattered with practiced efficiency, pocketing weapons and credits, scanning the corpses for useful upgrades. Garrus watched the perimeter, Shepard appearing at his side a moment later. He couldn’t read her expression.

“It took the squad three minutes to take down over twenty Eclipse mercs,” she said quietly. “No injuries to the squad, no collateral damage. Smart, Garrus. And a little scary, too.”

Pride. That was what was written on her features. He barely had time to register the expression before it disappeared, replaced with wide-eyed shock. Shepard jerked her chin back toward the squad when he tilted his head in question.

There was a woman standing behind him.

Her back was to Garrus. As he watched, fringe prickling, the woman bent down and shoved her fingers into a hole in the merc’s armor.

Garrus barely wondered who or what she was -- she had seen the squad, and now she was a liability.

He asked himself if he would be able to kill a civilian -- breaking his one non-negotiable rule -- to protect the squad, if that civilian became a threat. The answer was an unequivocal _yes._ The fact that she was now staring at her bloody hand wasn’t any comfort

Before he could lift his rifle, Shepard grabbed his arm and held him still.

“Look,” she said when he tried to pull away. _“Look.”_

Erash walked past the woman without a second glance.

“They don’t see her,” whispered Shepard. “But we do.”

The woman stood slowly and faced Shepard and Garrus.

_Her face._ Garrus tried not to shudder and failed. The woman’s face was a cracked ruin, burned beyond distinction, healed into red, raw scars. Most of her hair had been scorched away and what was left was bone-white and brittle. Her eyes were bright white pits sunk deep into their sockets.

Shepard moved in front of Garrus. “What are you?” she asked.

The woman raised her bloody hand. It was a good hand: strong, with sharp, bone-thin fingers. Shepard stepped forward, her own hands clenched in fists.

All around them, the squad kept working, oblivious.

The woman turned her head from one side to the other, so slowly Garrus wasn’t sure at first that she was moving at all. Her gaze, cool and white, fell on the squad as they worked.

“What _are_ you?” Shepard repeated. Garrus recognized the command in her voice from a dozen standoffs: the Thorian, Matriarch Benezia, Saren. He took a step forward to stand at her back.

The woman’s face broke open; it took Garrus a moment to realize she was smiling and not just baring her teeth. It amazed him that a face so destroyed was still able to show something like happiness.

Thirty seconds and twice as many heartbeats went by. The woman kept smiling. 

"My Shepard," she said, her voice a crackle and flange. "My Vakarian." 

Garrus was sure he didn’t blink, but the woman vanished without a sound or shiver. She was gone, white eyes, burned face, and armor with her.

“What the hell,” said Shepard. She turned around to face Garrus, eyes glittering. “What the hell, Garrus?”

He didn’t have an answer.

 


	13. Chapter 13

“I thought the strangest thing in my life was you,” said Garrus. “But I think whatever it was has you beat, Shepard.”

She rubbed her cheek and nodded. They were back in his room, curled together in bed. Vortash and Sensant were on guard duty; everyone else was asleep. The base seemed warm and alive like it hadn’t in almost two weeks.

“What do you think it was? Another ghost?”

“How should I know?” snapped Shepard. “It’s not like I got a list of other ghosts who might be hanging around. There’s no new ghost orientation day.”

Garrus let the irritation in her voice flow through him and tucked her head under his chin. A moment later, she sighed.

“Sorry. Guess that rattled me more than I wanted to admit.”

“You and me both. That _face_."

Shepard shoved her face into his neck. “Don’t remind me. Did someone set her on fire?”

“Looks like.” He waited before asking again. “Do you think she was another ghost?”

Shepard propped herself up on her elbow. “It’s possible. The way she just appeared, and then vanished again. Hell, I don’t even know she was a she. I didn’t get any funny feeling when I got close, but I’ve never met another ghost. I might not know if I did.”  

Garrus flexed his mandibles, a bad nervous habit, and one Shepard had learned to recognize. She put her hand on his face until he went still. “I don’t think she was dangerous, no matter how much she looked like she was.”

Garrus grunted.

“I know how it sounds, but we’re soldiers, Garrus. We go with our instincts. What did yours tell you?”

He thought about it. After the initial shock of her appearance had worn off, he’d felt only adrenalin, and revulsion at her face. No fear, no suspicion, despite the blood on her hands. She hadn’t even looked at the squad.

She had _smiled_ , as sweetly as her broken face had allowed.  

“I wasn’t afraid of her. She’s not a threat.”

Shepard traced the markings along his mandible. “My thoughts exactly. Which...”

“...doesn’t do anything to tell us what she is.”

“Right.” Shepard pressed her face into his neck again. “Forget her. For now.

Garrus knew he wouldn’t be able to make Shepard keep talking about the woman, no matter how badly he wanted to. He shrugged farther down into the pillows.

“You know I’m here, right? Really here, not just a figment of your imagination.”

He laughed. “I got over thinking I was crazy around the time you sabotaged a squad of mechs. Maybe before. I know you’re real, Shepard, but keep saying it if it helps convince you.”

Shepard huffed impatiently and hooked her leg over his. He was dozing when she started talking again.

“Two years ago, if anyone had told me I’d fall in love with a turian, I’d have laughed in their face.”

His neck flared hot and he coughed, so startled he couldn’t have spoken if there had been a gun at his head.

“Then again, two years ago, if someone had told me I’d suffocate and burn to death, then come back to _haunt_ a turian, I’d have laughed my ass off. Guess that just goes to show.”

“Ah, yeah,” said Garrus. He couldn’t seem to make his tongue work. Shepard kept going, not noticing or not caring that Garrus was holding her tighter with every word she said.

“I never thought I was a xenophile. I mean, I thought the asari were attractive, but the entire galaxy does. No surprises there. But all this? Never thought it would happen. No regrets, though. This is -- it’s weird to say it -- this is the happiest I’ve ever been. When I’m not yelling at you for acting like an idiot.”

Garrus knew from experience no one liked to say things like this and not get a response, but nothing came to mind.

Hell with it all, she understands, he thought. He bumped his forehead against the top of her head. When she looked and smiled, a bit uncertain, he kissed her.

“Thought you were just going to lay there and let me embarrass myself some more,” she said. “Not very gentlemanly, letting a woman lay herself on the line like that.”

“Shepard --”

Shepard pressed her hand over his mouth. “I will peel off your plates if you apologize, Garrus. It’s all right. I’ve got you.”

“Yeah, I know you do. I’ve got you too.”

***

The moment Weaver called to say she was in the tunnels below the base, Shepard grabbed his hand and didn’t let go. 

When Weaver deactivated the cloak, beaming and sweaty, Garrus relaxed, savoring the pinch in his healing muscles. Everyone was home. 

“ _Oh my god_ , this ‘tool smells like greasy farts,” said Weaver. “I’ve had that cloak running so long my ass is sweating.” 

“So charming,” said Garrus. He couldn’t hide his grin. Shepard squeezed his hand. “You’re hopeless, Weaver.”

“Oh, totally,” she said, her smile even wider. She was crying too, just a little. “I’m so glad to be back, you have no idea.”

“Come on home. But no saying hi to anyone until you get that off and get showered. You reek.” He and Shepard stood aside to let her in.

“Yeah, fine, Dad.” Weaver’s smile didn’t falter as she ran up the stairs, yelling a hello to the squad, who had gathered in the common room. The shout that went up in response made Garrus hot under the ribs.

“One more, then we’re all together.” Shepard wrapped her arm around his carapace and hugged him. “Thank God. It’s about time.”

“Yeah,” said Garrus. After a quick look to make sure none of the squad could see, he brushed his forehead to the top of her head. “And Butler’s on his way. Going to be a lot louder with him here.”

“ _Oi!_ ” crackled Garrus’ comm.

“Ah, the dulcet tones of our resident bruiser,” said Shepard. “Better let him in so the party can start.”

***

The party was nothing short of apocalyptic. Garrus wondered why no one came to investigate what was, even for Omega, an obscene amount of noise, but after the third round of hugs and the second bottle of what he and Sidonis were drinking, he stopped caring.

Shepard stayed long enough to whisper that she would take the watch, and vanished.

After that, things went blurry, and then went dark. Garrus woke up on the couch, face-down, with Sensat half on top of him. He was snoring. And drooling.

“Oh, wonderful,” Garrus groaned, and shifted him off as gently as possible. Sensat made a little noise of protest before curling into a ball and going still.

Most of the squad was piled around the common room, and if he hadn’t heard them snoring, he’d have thought they were dead. No one moved, not even when he stumbled over one of Monteague’s arms and kicked Butler in the side.

He climbed the stairs carefully, to keep the noise in his head to a minimum, and was almost to his room when he heard the sisters talking to Weaver in the squad’s room.

“So you bet Erash the boss’s got a secret wife?”  

“Or husband,” said Mierin. “Don’t be so heteronormative.”

“God, _sorry_. But how can you tell there’s anyone? It’s not like he gives anything away.”

“There are ways to tell,” said Melanis. “You’ll learn when you grow up.”

“Gee, thanks,” said Weaver. “The _when you grow up_ line isn’t old or anything. Nineteen is like, a million in Omega years.”

“I can’t argue with that,” laughed Mierin. “But really, it’s not so hard to tell.”

“How do you figure?”

“He never talks about anyone, except way in the past. He mentioned that recon scout but that happened what? Seven, eight years ago?” Garrus heard Melanis grunt as she shoved her bag back into her locker.

“And?”

“And he wouldn’t let us buy him a lap dance from an _asari stripper_ ,” answered Mierin. “You have to be dead or married to turn that down.”

“So, either he’s a cold fish, as you humans say, or he’s got someone and doesn’t want to mention it. For the record, I think it’s a secret wife, back on Palaven. Maybe they had a fight, maybe she kicked him out. He wouldn’t be here if it was a happy marriage. Probably arranged, poor guy.” Melanis sighed in sympathy.

Weaver made a thoughtful noise. “I don’t know,” she said carefully. “I don’t think it’s that simple.”

“Yeah?” Metal creaked as one of the sisters sat down on the couch. “What’s your theory, then?”

A long moment went by, long enough for Garrus to turn away, before Weaver’s voice stopped him.

“Look, I’m only admitting this because I’m still a little drunk, but -- I always thought he had a thing for Commander Shepard.”

Mierin laughed and quickly smothered it. “Sorry! But why? Humans and turians aren’t killing each other anymore -- well, not that often, at least -- but they’re not exactly the best of friends.”

There was a squeak as Weaver slid farther down in the couch cushions. “I don’t know, it’s just. You remember the vids, right? Every time she was interviewed, he was there. Even that asari doctor wasn’t there as much. It’s like, he always had her six, you know?”

“Why, Weaver,” said Melanis. “You’re a romantic. A bloody-minded, filthy little romantic.”

“Fuck you,” said Weaver, without anger. “It’s part of my dazzling charm.”

“Wait.” Mierin had a sly edge to her voice. “How do you know he was in every vid, Weaver? You got a crush on the boss?”

“No!” said Weaver. “No, nothing like that. Turians aren’t my thing. I like...skinnier guys. But anyways, there wasn’t much else to do when I first got here. Fixing broken bits of tech, trying not to get shot every time I went outside, and watching the vids. That was my life. And Shepard, I just thought she was the coolest. Total badass, but she wasn’t a dick about it. She made me want to try enlisting again.”

“You wanted to join the Alliance?”

“Yeah. When I was sixteen. I hacked the system to make me look eighteen, but the recruiters didn't fall for it. Called me a baby. So I diverted their next two paychecks into a dummy account and used the credits to buy passage out to Omega. Fucking jerks.”

“Sorry,” said Melanis. “We didn’t know.”

“Whatever, their loss. Looks like I found a way to help anyways, you know?”

“It looks like we all did.”

There was another long pause, and then Mierin laughed again.

“I’m sorry, Weaver, but Shepard and Vakarian? _Really_?”

“Come on, it’s sweet!” Weaver protested. “They were good friends, at least. You can’t say they weren’t. But don’t tell him I told you. I don’t want to be the dick that brings her up.”

Mierin and Melanis murmured a promise, and the conversation faded as they crawled into their bunks. Garrus walked toward his room, turning his mind toward bathing and maybe food, when Shepard came into view.

She was at his desk, chin in hand, frowning as she read one of his datapads. In moments like these, Garrus couldn’t understand how no one else could see her, ghost or not. When she was alive, she was the brightest object in any room. Even in rest, without knowing anyone was watching, Shepard still projected the entire force of her will.

When he came into their room, she didn’t look up. He didn’t mind. It gave him the chance to watch her without distraction.

He blinked and tapped a command into his visor. When his sight zoomed in, a low curl of dread slipped into his gut.

Her scars were gone.

 _Maybe it’s time to let go of expecting the worst,_ he thought. _She hasn’t gone anywhere in months. She said she would always come back. This could be a good sign._

Shepard finally noticed him watching, and looked up with a sweet, tired smile.

_A good sign. Yes._

“Good morning, starshine,” said Shepard. She spun lazily in his chair. “You look terrible. What were you guys drinking? I think it can do double-duty as krogan tranquilizer.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” murmured Garrus. “I feel great.”

“Really?”

“No, I’m about to go collapse in the shower.”

“Thought as much.” She put down the datapad and watched him.

“Anything to report?” he asked as he stripped down. When he fumbled the clasps on his tunic, Shepard stepped in to help. He gave her the best suggestive look he could and nodded at their bed, but she only laughed.

“Nothing that will require anyone being awake for the next six hours. Eclipse can’t decide if they want you or Garm dead first, and the Blue Suns are staying quiet until they know which way the fight’ll go.”

Garrus grunted. “What about that new group? The Talons?”

“They’re not a concern right now.” Shepard dismissed them with a sharp wave. “Small-timers. They’re moving base down to the Duilo district to get out of the way of the bigger groups. Until they’re re-established, forget them. I’ll keep an eye on it. Go collapse.”

His private shower was unreliable at best. Garrus rarely used the water, which was usually lukewarm and left a slimy feeling on his plates; instead, he used the traditional oil and sand. His head pounded when he tried to get his hands to cooperate with the jar lids. When he dropped the sand for the second time, Garrus sighed and leaned against the wall.

“Need some help?” Shepard asked from the other side of the door.

His reply stuck in his throat. Shepard was good, kind, and brave, but she had no concept of personal space. The only time Garrus saw Kaidan close to tears was when Shepard followed him into the head, talking over mission parameters.

A long time ago, the first time Shepard followed him into the shower, Garrus tried to explain how intimate, how _private_ , turian bathing rituals were. At best, Garrus was an agnostic -- despite the evidence of an afterlife that was only ten feet away -- but he always kept to this part of the sacraments: when you bathed, you washed away your sins. All the detritus of frustration and desire were cleansed by oil and sand. Garrus knew his sins were too many to be washed away so easily, but he liked the ritual. If someone helped him, they shared his flaws and mistakes.

A human might call it a marriage.

He explained it to Shepard in vague terms, and ever since she had respected his wishes. But now --

Of course. Shepard’s research on turians hadn’t been focused on just the physical aspects. She knew what she was asking.

_Two years ago, if anyone said I’d fall in love with a turian, I’d have laughed in their face._

He nodded, then remembered she couldn’t see him.

“Sure,” he said. “Yes.” He blinked and Shepard stood in front of him. She looked almost shy.

“You’ll have to show me what to do,” she said. “I don’t want to mess up and ruin everything.”

Garrus held out the jars. His hands shook. He blamed it on the hangover. “Just go slowly. You won’t hurt me.”

Shepard took the oil, her fingers sliding over his. He turned his back to her and pressed his hands to the wall.

For a long time, neither of them moved.

This was not the shape he thought his life would take. He had faith in what was tangible: his rifle, his armor, the ship or planet under his feet. It was harder to believe in his abilities, or his choices. He had learned, after so long, to trust himself.

Shepard -- he had trusted Shepard from the beginning. She was bedrock, the foundation to build a life upon.

“The oil first, then the sand,” he told her.

Her cool hand stroked his back, slick with oil. His neck warmed, not from desire or embarrassment; he didn’t feel either of those things. What he felt was peace, and a quiet sadness that this hadn’t happened sooner.

 _Stupid_ , he thought as she moved from his back to his legs. _It could only have started now._

“Is there something I’m supposed to say?” asked Shepard.

He shook his head. “It’s meant to be just this,” he answered. Shepard hummed and crouched to reach his feet.

After that, she didn’t say anything. The only sounds were his breathing and the slow scrape of the sand as she worked. When she paused, her hand resting in the bend of his elbow, he realized a third sound had joined the others: a low rolling thrum, almost too deep to be heard by human ears. She reached up and pressed her fingertips to his throat.

“What does that mean?”

Garrus straightened. “A lot of things. Trust. Loyalty. Gratitude.” He turned his head as far as he could to look at her. “And...”

Shepard met his eyes. Even without his visor, he saw the minute fluctuations of her pupils as they flared and contracted. She pressed her lips together and nodded.

“All good things.” She put her free hand on his waist; not to tease, but to steady him. He turned around and focused on the point of contact. “It’s not just yours to carry,” she said. “It’s mine, too. Don’t ever forget it. No matter what happens, you’re not alone.”

“You’ve got me,” he said.

“Always.”

***

The next two days went by in a fever of activity. The woman didn’t reappear, no matter how hard Garrus and Shepard watched for her.

Garrus barely saw Shepard. The squad seemed to believe that, post-Garm, he needed someone with him at all times. It was hilarious for the first fifteen minutes and agonizing every moment after. Unless he was sleeping, he wasn’t alone.

Not that he had been since those bleak five days, but being alone with Shepard was the only true peace he had.

Weaver refused to wear the tactical cloak again, claiming it was better used as a template for upgrades for the whole squad. Privately, Garrus agreed, but it meant the squad needed another on-site hacker. Vortash, to everyone’s surprise, volunteered, and Weaver admitted to Garrus he learned quickly. 

Butler channeled his frustration -- sexual and professional -- into creating a workout routine that terrified Garrus when he stopped to consider it. No one avoided Butler, exactly, but they did give him a wider berth than usual. Sidonis was the only exception, either through bravery or stupidity.

Sensat and Grundan continued to be test subjects for Erash and Weaver, and had the burns and bruises to prove it.

Vortash avoided the sisters as much as possible until Garrus pulled him aside and told him to grow a pair. The meaning translated, even if the exact words didn’t. It helped that Ripper, Sidonis, and Monteague instituted a “mens’ nights”, which, as Garrus discovered when he joined them, involved explicit vids and alcohol.

The sisters squared off a section of the garage downstairs for practicing their biotics. Garrus was there when Melanis, after months of struggling, finally managed to Reave. She was out cold for fifteen minutes, but after that she deployed it almost without effort.

“I’m jealous,” Shepard sighed later, staring at her hands. “Watching them makes me miss my amp. Something else I never thought I’d say. Always wanted to learn how to Reave.”

“I’m not surprised. Anything that causes pain and suffering is always at the top of your list.”

“Laugh it up.” Shepard leaned back in her chair, legs splayed. “In case you hadn’t noticed, that’s why you were always my favorite.” She let her head fall against the back of the chair. Other humans only looked so open and loose when they were completely safe, or on the edge of sleep. Shepard’s eyes moved restlessly over the ceiling, far away and planning.

Everyone else was finally asleep, except for the guards. For the first time since Weaver came home, Garrus and Shepard were alone. Taking advantage of the quiet was not an option; Weaver had given him a stack of datapads to read and

“Since you mentioned pain and suffering, Shepard, I had an idea I wanted your opinion on.”

“Shoot.”

“We’ve had our fun with smashing merc ops and disrupting smugglers. What if we tried a different approach?”

Shepard folded her hands on her belly. “Seems like your current approach works pretty well, boss. But changing things up couldn’t hurt. It’ll keep the mercs guessing. What did you have in mind?”

Two sentences into his explanation, Shepard abandoned any sign of relaxing and leaned forward, her eyes bright. By the time he was finished, she was trying not to grin.

“Psychological warfare? That could actually work, Garrus. Like I said, you’ve already made it personal with Garm. Why not the rest of those bastards?” She laughed like a little girl. “So who’ll you go after first? Tarak? Jaroth?”

“The only one we haven’t pissed off is Tarak. He probably thinks we’re ignoring him.” Garrus clenched his fists.

“You’re not going to let him think that for long, are you?” Shepard leaned forward, her eyes a sharp, secret gleam in the half-light. “Wouldn’t be very nice of you if you did. What’ve you got in mind?”

***

Getting past Tarak’s first layer of bodyguards was almost too easy. Shepard scouted ahead, flashing back into Garrus’ sightline long enough to wave him on before disappearing again. Butler and Sidonis moved soundlessly behind him, graceful despite their bulk and full armor.

Before they entered the apartment block, Garrus opened the secure squad channel.

“One last test of the voice modulators. Butler, go.”

“She sells seashells down by the sea shore.” Butler’s voice came back cool and unaccented; a barefaced voice, even for a human.

“Right. Sidonis?”

“Victory, at any cost.” Garrus winced. Weaver’s idea of a practical joke meant Sidonis sounded like a fledgling whose second larynx hadn’t finished maturing. Butler coughed to hide a laugh.

“When we get back home, I’m going to wreck you. And Weaver.”

Butler choked down another laugh and straightened when Garrus glared at him. “That’s enough, Butler. We move on my mark.”

“I don’t see why I have to sound like this,” said Sidonis, for the fourth time since they had left the base. “I sound like a kid. A whiny kid. Why do you get to be the one who sounds all... menacing?”

“Because I’m not the one complaining about a joke a nineteen-year-old played on me.”

“It’s not fair!” Sidonis gripped. “It sounds creepy when you _breathe_ , boss.”

The telltale shimmer flickered just before the edge of his faceplate cut off his vision. “You’re clear, Darth Vader,” said Shepard. “The next patrol won’t come through for another fifteen minutes; Weaver’s hack has the security feeds from this area playing on a loop.”

“Mark. Move out!”

The bypass shunt took thirty-four seconds to hack the lock on Tarak’s apartment. Garrus gloated briefly when no ugly surprises caught them on the way to the bedroom. Bodyguards, security programs, voice-recognition software -- and none of it could keep them out.

“Fourteen minutes,” said Shepard.

Tarak’s room was immaculate, all gleaming chrome and polished hardware. Even his sheets were pristine white. That kind of clean cost major credits, especially on Omega; Garrus let his anger flare briefly as he considered just how Tarak managed to fund the decor.

There was a chair facing the bed, white leather and silver fixtures. Garrus considered it for a moment. Shepard laughed.

“Oh, go ahead. You know you want to.”

He sat down. Butler and Sidonis moved to flank him on either side, shotgun and SMG trained on Tarak’s sleeping form.

“Thirteen minutes, Garrus.” Shepard moved out of his line of sight, her eyes on the door.

Garrus shifted to a better position and let his rifle rest on his thighs. For a few seconds, he let himself savor the mental image: three fully-armored figures, watching a sleeping batarian. It would be so easy to take Tarak out now, but that would only put a hold on the Blue Suns while Tarak’s lackeys jockeyed for position. Garrus wanted them off Omega completely, and for that, he needed to terrify, not kill.

He opened the comm channel as he cleared his throat. Tarak rolled over and threw an arm over his eyes. Garrus cleared his throat again, more insistently. Tarak sat up, all four eyes blinking at the gloom.

“Wuzzet. Wuzzappenin.”

“This is your wake-up call, Tarak.” Garrus wished he could lean back a little farther; his armor was intimidating but inflexible. “Archangel says good morning.”

“Fuck!” Tarak jerked upright, his hands cradling the back of his neck as he curled into a ball. “Fuck!”

“Eleven minutes. Less, if he keeps up that noise.”

Garrus settled deeper into the chair. He wished they could take it with them when they left. Weaver was jamming Tarak’s comm channels from back at the base; as long as she stayed alert, Tarak couldn’t call for help, but yelling could be just as effective as a panic button or silent alert. Garrus lifted a finger. Butler and Sidonis stepped away from his chair to cross behind it, guns still trained on Tarak. They moved in a steady, ground-eating lope across the room and back again.

“Boss, we’re in position,” said Sensat over the secure channel. “No sign of that patrol yet. Ready to clear the way on your signal.”

Garrus tilted his head to the side. “Relax, Tarak. I’m only going to kill you if you try something. Like I said, this is a wake-up call. A friendly warning.”

“A friendly -- just what the hell are you playing at?” Tarak looked up. His eyes tracked Sidonis and Butler, lingering on a cabinet just to the left of Garrus’ chair.

_So that’s where his guns are. Stupid, Tarak, really stupid._

Garrus leaned forward. Tarak pushed away until his back hit the headboard. “I haven’t been playing the whole time I’ve been here. And I’m not playing now. Here’s your warning: leave.”

“Leave --” Tarak seemed stunned. “Leave,” he repeated. He shook his head, his shoulders heaving in a laugh. “You expect me to just go? You’re brave, Archangel, but you’re stupid. Blue Suns will always be on Omega.”

“Not if their fearless leader decides better business opportunities lie elsewhere.” Garrus put a cruel twist on his words, knowing they’d sound even better in his new voice. “Start packing, Tarak. Or I bring all my friends on my next visit.”

“Seven minutes, Garrus. Start wrapping it up.”

Tarak glared at him, so full of hate that Garrus might have been worried -- if Tarak hadn’t been in his underwear.

“This is a courtesy visit, Tarak. Next time, you won’t even know I’m here.”

“You’ll never win,” Tarak finally managed to sneer. “You’re just another vigilante. We killed everyone who came before you.”

“They weren’t me,” said Garrus. “They didn’t have my squad.” He stood up. Tarak cringed even farther into his sheets. “Sleep well, Tarak.”

“Hey, boss, looks like the patrol’s getting suspicious. They’re about to cross through the blast zone,” said Sensat. “Uh, make that really suspicious. They just found what’s left of the bodyguards.”

Garrus refocused on Tarak. “If you think you can come after us, remember that Garm said Archangel was dead. But here I am.” He switched to the secure channel. “Second squad, _mark_.”

The back wall of Tarak’s apartment exploded. Weaver had finally fixed the trigger on her sticky bombs.

The drop was two stories, straight down, but their shields cushioned the fall. By the time Sidonis staggered to his feet and shrugged off Butler’s hand, the second squad was mopping up the last of the patrol. A few were left -- more than enough for Garrus and the rest of his squad to join in.

A pair of Blue Suns stood back to back, trying to hold off the gunfire. Butler dropped his gun long enough to grab a helmet in each hand. The mercs struggled, thrashing and screaming until Butler smashed their heads together. They dropped, twitching as their nervous systems fired one last time. Thick, clotted scraps of what had been their brains leaked out of the cracks in their helmets, red-spattered and steaming in the cool air.

Another merc opened fire on Butler, whose shields whined and went out. Garrus jumped over a corpse, shredded from the explosion, firing back at the merc to return the favor. Butler didn’t seem to notice that his shields were gone. He turned, head lowered between his shoulders, and spread his arms wide with a roar. The merc dropped their gun and tried to run, but Butler caught him before he took three steps. There was a shriek, cut off when Butler’s hands closed around the merc’s throat.

Garrus turned back to the battle. Butler was just fine. Better than fine; the man really did love using his hands.

Melanis had volunteered for the second squad solely to try out her Reave. She deployed it from on top of a pile of rubble, hissing as her amp fed back into her shields and med-pack.

“Garrus, get down!” shouted Shepard. She shoved him to the side, in time for another Reave to slice through where he had been standing. Garrus rolled over and watched the Reave slide into Shepard. She winced and blinked out, reappearing on his other side.

“Well, shit,” she said. “That was -- unpleasant.”

There was no time to ask if she was all right. When a shot ricocheted off a broken slab to his right, he rolled to the left and up into a crouch. His Mantis was useless at this range, but he snapped off a quick Overload while he switched to his Vindicator and checked the thermal clips. Shepard slapped another one into his open palm.

“On your three!” she yelled. “Watch out for Sensat!” Garrus sighted, exhaled, and fired. The dust from the explosion, already a complication, was almost opaque as the squad kept kicking it up, working their way down to the alley at the end of the block.

“All right!” he yelled over the secure channel. “No time for checking bodies. Move out!”

“Copy that,” the squad chorused. They converged on his position: Sensat, Melanis, Sidonis and Butler, covered in blood and dust, but whole and alive.

“Move!” he yelled. “You know your assigned paths. Go, go, go!” He waited until they were clear, and lifted his head to look back up at Tarak’s apartment. The batarian glared down at him. At some point, he’d changed into his armor -- a pointless effort, given that his guards had just been destroyed to a man.

“Don’t forget, Tarak. It’s not just me. Archangel’s an army.” He backed into the dust, Shepard at his side, and waited until she grabbed his arm to start running.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someday I'll stop posting these mega-chapters. Whew! Thank you for reading, my dears <3


	14. Chapter 14

Shepard stayed silent the entire way back, her face etched in stony lines that kept Garrus quiet too.

 _She doesn’t feel things the way I do_ , he thought after the second time he tried to start a sentence and she wouldn’t look at him. 

Still.

He put a hand on her back; not a reproach, just steady reassurance. Shepard tensed but when he stayed quiet, she relaxed and gave him a rueful half-smile. 

 _You’re not off the hook, Shepard. We_ will _talk about this._

Shepard slung an arm around his carapace and pulled herself closer. In what seemed less like coincidence and more like happy telepathy, she had a response for exactly what he was thinking. 

“I know you want to talk about this, Garrus, but I don’t. Not yet.” She kept her eyes on the alley ahead of them. “I’m fine, but let’s just get home.”

Garrus nodded. Shepard’s arm slipped lower to rest around his waist. She may not have been trying to distract him, but now all he could think about was how quickly they could get back to base.

Two days was a long time to wait.

***

Shepard disappeared as soon as they passed into the base. Garrus knew she was waiting for him up in their room, impatient to talk about the mission and to invade his personal space as she checked him for wounds. He kept the debrief with the squad as short as possible before he assigned guard duty and sent the rest to the showers. No one questioned the early dismissal; exhaustion hit them hard once the battle-spell dropped away, even for the squadmates who hadn’t gone on this mission.

Garrus took the stairs two at a time.

Shepard had her back to him, arranging his datapads into new stacks. He heard her impatient huff as he opened his armor case and ducked his head to hide the wide flare of his grin.

“Butler actually scared me a little today. I knew he had the Berserker gene mods -- at least, I hope he did. If he was born that way, you should be terrified of him. Either way, maybe we should have started his dry spell a little earlier.”

Garrus made a noncommittal noise as he unclasped his armor and shrugged it off. The relief hit him in a solid wave and left him so dizzy he had to lean against the wall before he could straighten up. He glanced over his shoulder at Shepard. She drummed her fingers on the desk and set the last datapad to the side.

“You’re awful quiet, Garrus. Don’t want to talk through the mission?”

“Not particularly,” he said.

Shepard half-turned. “Did you have something else in mind?”

“You could say that,” Garrus answered. He snapped his armor case shut and turned to face Shepard.

When their eyes met, the air went electric; every angle sharpened and even the light overhead felt brighter. Shepard leaned her hip on the desk and folded her arms across her chest.

As he walked toward her, Shepard smiled and looked away. He lifted her head with his thumb beneath her lip and pressed his forehead to hers, parsing the welter of his feelings: dregs of adrenalin, fury at Tarak, affection for the squad, exhaustion, worry, and in the center, the hot well of everything he felt for Shepard.

She stayed still as he traced her face with his fingers and eyes. It occurred to him that Shepard was never still without a reason; she could stand motionless for hours if the mission called for it, but given a choice, she would never stop moving. No one else had ever been given so much of her time or peace.

The base was quiet, the squad had relaxed its watch over him, and Shepard was only inches away.

“You’re making that noise again.”

He hummed and pushed closer.

“I think I’ve been very stupid.”

Garrus opened his eyes. Shepard’s irises were thin jeweled rings around wide pupils. “Stupid? You?”

She linked her fingers behind his neck. “Yeah. Here I am, worrying you haven’t said... _it_ back. You’ve been saying it the whole time, haven’t you?”

Garrus kept his forehead pressed to hers as he nodded.

“Yeah, pretty stupid. Got a lot to learn.” She laughed again, the sound coming out skewed and a little sad. “Good thing I’ve got so much time, right?”

 _If she stays still, she thinks too much_ , Garrus realized. _That’s why she doesn’t let herself stop. The least I can do is try to make her stop thinking._

For that, speaking wouldn’t be necessary.

*** 

Garrus woke in the middle of the night. Shepard’s cool, still form wrapped around him, firm but not restrictive. He slid a hand down her bare back. Her hand squeezed his leg in response.

Shepard rolled away, her hands leaving his body reluctantly.

“Time for your patrol?”

She nodded in the gloom as she dressed. “You’ve still got a few hours before you need to be awake. I’ll be back before the watch changes.” She bent to kiss the top of his head and disappeared.

Garrus counted five minutes in his head before he swung to the floor and got dressed. Sleep was out of reach; he didn’t want to stay in bed when Shepard wasn’t there. He hoped the scum of Omega would stay quiet tonight.

The danger of a _what if_ was how quickly one blossomed into many. The first stretched out sticky tendrils to snarl in his thoughts; everywhere it stopped, another fanned open and spread until he was lost in the tangle.

Garrus made himself stop pacing and sat down at his desk. _This is like any other mystery_ , he told himself. _You ask questions, you make connections._

He hesitated before opening a secure channel. The last conversation with his father had gone well, but that was no guarantee this one would. From experience, Garrus knew he could weather his father’s disappointment, but his father’s laughter was a different story.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he opened the channel. With luck, he wouldn’t be calling in the middle of the night.

Thrace answered.

“Garrus,” he said. “I’m beginning to think you actually want to talk to me. Your mother and sister are out. I’ll try to entertain you while --"

“Dad,” Garrus burst in, before his nerves failed completely, “what do you know about spirits?”

Thrace said nothing, so still that Garrus thought the screen was frozen.

“Dad?”

“I’m going to need a drink,” said Thrace calmly. “A very big one.” He walked off-screen. Garrus caught the clink of glass against glass.

His father sat down and stared at Garrus, not even a stray rumble giving away what he was thinking.

“I know you too well to bother asking _why_ you’re calling to talk about spirits, Garrus, and you know me too well to have forgotten that your mother’s the religious one.” Thrace gave one of his dry-twig laughs. Dualla Vakarian was only religious by turian standards; compared to the rest of the galaxy, she was an atheist. “So you want my opinion.” He took a deep swallow of his drink and regarded Garrus. When Thrace spoke, it was clear he had chosen his words with more than his usual precision. He wanted his meaning to be perfectly clear.

“Spirits are not an answer to prayers. It’s hard for the other races to understand that. They have their gods, their protectors, and those all exist to help. That’s their whole existence. Spirits are unique. They exist because we bring them into being. We call them forth, not from our need, but from the acts of living and working together. They don’t help us, because they are us. They may inspire, but they do not interfere. Some melding of purpose and place, honor and determination, called out of the dark.” Thrace laughed again. “You caught me in a rare poetic mood. Don’t tell your mother.”

Garrus tried to laugh. “Can spirits change?”

“What do you think happens when a member of a squad dies, or an old building is torn down? Of course they change. The one thing they don’t do is _leave_. Once we call them, they stay.” Thrace cocked his head to the side. “Good thing it’s a big galaxy. It would get pretty crowded otherwise.”

“Have you heard of...ghosts?”

“Ghosts? Back when the first humans started showing up on the Citadel.” Thrace shuddered. “It’s a horrible idea. Undignified. When a person dies, they should just be dead. Gone is gone.”

“Gone is gone,” echoed Garrus. “Right.”

His father didn’t hear him. “I’ve often wondered what spirits would look like now that turians are serving with other races in such numbers.” For the third time in the conversation, he laughed. “The spirit for my squad at C-Sec must have been one ugly bastard.” His laugh cut off, and his eyes focused on Garrus, sharp and cold.

“What would the spirit of the Normandy have looked like, Garrus? Turians and humans built it. Then your Commander Shepard collected a krogan, a quarian, an asari -- and you.”He tapped his glass but didn’t drink.

“It doesn’t surprise me that humans came up with the idea of _ghosts_ ,” he said. “They adapt to everything else. Why wouldn’t they be the ones to find a way around death?”

Thrace took a drink. Garrus stared at his hands.

“Like I said, I’m not religious. You’re just getting an old detective’s ramblings. A priest would have been able to explain. Too bad they’re all dead.”

“It helped. I needed...clarity.” Garrus tried to smile. His father didn’t look convinced.

“You’ve never lacked that, son, only control.” Thrace leaned back. “It looks like you’ve found that now, too. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, it suits you.”

A real smile touched Garrus’ face. “You have no idea,” he said.

Thrace smiled back. “Good,” he answered. “Garrus, there’s no easy segue for this, but I need to --” He went still, head cocked to the side in such an obvious listening posture that Garrus mimicked him without thinking. There was nothing to be heard, but Garrus watched Thrace close up, his body shuttering away any tells or hints of what he’d just heard.

“It can wait,” said Thrace, without any emphasis. That peculiar emptiness in his voice chilled Garrus, for no reason he could pinpoint.

“Dad --”

“Your mother and sister are home,” he said. “I’ll tell them you said hello.”

His father disconnected the call before Garrus could say anything else.

***

When the time came for his watch, Shepard hadn’t returned. Garrus took his time with his armor, checking each piece before he put it on, but his delay was useless. Ripper’s watch was finished, and the squad would comment if Garrus was a minute late. He gave his bed one last look and turned off the lights.

Ripper saluted as Garrus approached. Garrus tried to wave the gesture away. Ripper ignored him.

“Nothing to report, boss,” he said. “Not even a pyjak. Looks like you’ve got a quiet night ahead of you.”

“Just the way I like it. Thanks, Ripper.”

Ripper tipped another salute and jogged back into the base. Garrus listened for his footsteps on the stairs, then for the door of the squad room to open. When the door hissed closed and he heard Ripper’s footsteps overheard, he let himself sigh and slump down.

 _I am not going to worry about her,_ he told himself. _She’ll be back._

In his gut, he was almost grateful she left. He wanted -- no, he needed -- time to process the weedy hope that woke him, that made his heart lurch and his stomach go cold.

Garrus stood up straight and let the what-ifs form.

_What if Shepard is a spirit, and not a ghost at all? What if I called her back -- called her into being?_

The implications made him dizzy. If he called her, would she hear?

Something moved at the end of the bridge. Training took over; as he pivoted, he brought his rifle up and sighted down the scope.

The burned woman stood at the end of the bridge. She raised her hands. Garrus kept his rifle up, marking where the burns seemed more healed, where stubble covered her scalp. Her head rocked side to side, then she trembled, a low scraping sound grinding out of her throat. The woman staggered forward, nearly falling, before she pulled herself up and faced him, her head moving in its slow arcs again.

Garrus lowered his rifle. “What are you?” he asked, pitching his voice so the squad couldn’t hear.

The woman didn’t answer. She twitched and shuddered, the sound forcing its way past her teeth again. A terrible, fascinated revulsion kept Garrus’ eyes fixed on her, even when she dropped to her knees, clawing at her chest.

Garrus took a hesitant step toward her. His footsteps gritted on the bridge; at the sound, the woman’s head jerked up, her blank gaze fixed somewhere to his left.

“No closer,” she snarled. “No closer, Vakarian.”

He stopped, sickened, but unafraid.

The woman licked her lips. “You have no fear of me. That’s good.” She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, in her rich, cracked voice. “I’m so sorry.”

“Why?” He shifted his grip on his rifle. Her words were like falling through ice into black water.

Another shudder wracked her. When it passed through her, she planted her hands on the bridge and pushed herself upright. “I thought there was more time.” A spasm ripped up her right arm; she grabbed her wrist and forced her arm to stay still. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her white eyes slid over him. Garrus’ hands felt numb. All he could think of was --

“Shepard.”

The woman’s head lifted.

“Where’s Shepard?” he asked. The only answer he got was a laugh, broken and weak.

The woman’s face constricted; she tried to speak, and all that came out was a thin whistle. She shuddered, eyes closed, and forced herself to talk. “She is over the hills and far away.”

Garrus felt the air leave his lungs. Those words, tossed back at him from a memory he tried to ignore, chilled him. Omega’s humid air felt clammy on his hide.

“No,” he said. “Spirits, _no_.”

“I’m sorry,” said the woman. She stood straight, a pale, ruined figure in dull black armor, and held up her hands again.

“Be vigilant, my Vakarian,” she said, as if every word pained her. “It will move very quickly now.” She tried to say something else, but her mouth opened in a silent howl as her right arm wrenched itself back. “Vakarian, watch --”

Garrus reeled back as the woman screamed without sound, hands clawing at her face. “Can’t,” she cried. “Can’t, can’t --”

She disappeared, and the bridge was empty.

 _Shepard_ , Garrus thought, bleak and cold. _Shepard_.


	15. Chapter 15

It was only the memory of the burned woman’s words that brought him back to his watch and the empty, silent bridge.

_Be vigilant, my Vakarian._

Her voice: possessive, assured, determined. Even as she screamed, she warned him. Was she some other part of Shepard, thrown back to guide him even though it tormented her?

Garrus forced the thought down, stamped on it, buried it deep in his head. He didn’t have the skills to deal with metaphysical snarls, but he knew what he had of Shepard was all that remained of her. Spirit or ghost, Shepard was complete.

_My Shepard. My Vakarian._

Shepard called him _Garrus._ Maybe _boss_ if she felt like teasing him, or _Vakarian_ when she was in one of her white furies, but never _Archangel_ , and never _mine._ Shepard and the burned woman were not the same. The evidence was slim but he clung to it, the last thread of reason.

_I can’t do this_. _I’m a soldier and a cop, not a priest. I don’t even know what I believe in, except Shepard and my squad. If Shepard is gone, I’ll never understand. I’ll be blind._

A wave of unspeakable weariness crashed into him. It washed away the numb shock and disappeared. In its wake, he felt nothing but a sliver of resolve, steel-sharp. He believed in Shepard. She would be back.

_Focus, Vakarian. Remember your training_. _Ask questions, make connections, test your theories._

The burned woman had interrupted the third step. _Call her. Spirit or ghost, maybe she’ll come when you call._

“Shepard, if you hear me --” Garrus stopped and waited until his voice was steady. “Come back,” he said, soft but clear. He focused on her face, her hands, the sharp turn of her ankles. He rebuilt her in his mind. She would always come back, but she had a long way to travel. He would be patient.

Something moved behind him. Hope flared in his chest and died in an instant; he heard footsteps. Shepard moved silently. Sidonis, by the sound of it.

“Whoa, boss, you okay?” A hand touched his shoulder, two fingertips visible at the edge of his vision.

“Sidonis.” Garrus turned around. “What time is it?”

“0630.” Sidonis yawned. “Time for the morning meeting.” He cocked his head to the side and gave Garrus a shrewd look.

“You look wrecked,” he said, blunt as ever. “Bad dreams?”

“If only,” Garrus said thickly, before he could stop himself. Sidonis’ eyes shifted from shrewd to concerned.

“Do you need a minute?” he asked. “Looks like you’ve got a lot on your mind."

Any other day, Garrus might have welcomed the concern, but his nerves were shredded and he wanted to be alone so badly his head throbbed. “I’m fine,” he answered, more brusque than necessary. Sidonis blinked and nodded. He walked back into the base ahead of Garrus without another word.

Shepard hadn’t answered. He grabbed his worry with both hands and shoved it down, where it couldn’t intrude. Repression was a temporary measure; soon enough, he’d face the full brunt of worry over Shepard and the burned woman, but his control would get him through the meeting. Sidonis’ interruption was a blessing; without it, he would have stood on the bridge and driven himself crazy.

_Crazier._

Turians may not be born with self-control, but they all learn it early and well. This time there would be no mistakes. The squad wouldn’t catch him talking to himself. He was Archangel.

He would wait. He would have faith. He would find the answers. And Shepard would come back.

***

The squad murmured sleepy greetings at him as they shoved each other for spots on the couches. Those who didn’t get seats piled on top of the ones who did. Weaver came out of the kitchen last, juggling a coffee mug and an armful of datapads. She glared at Sidonis until he gave her his seat, and sat down with a triumphant grin.

“I don’t know why you try, Sidonis,” Garrus drawled. Sidonis looked up, startled, and relaxed when Garrus flicked a smile at him. “That’s Weaver’s seat.”

“I’m an optimist, what can I say?” Sidonis sat down in front of Weaver, an elbow propped on his knee.

Butler snorted. “Delusional, more like.”

“All right, let’s get started.” Garrus nodded at Weaver. “Report?”

“Blue Suns are running scared since our visit to Tarak.” She waved a datapad. “A lot of them want to leave, at least until they can gather a big enough force to wipe us out. His second in command agrees, but she’s not saying it to his face. Smart woman.”

“Jentha’s no idiot,” said Ripper. “She’ll tell Tarak what he wants to hear but she’ll be planning contingencies for when you go after Tarak again. If Tarak goes down, she’ll pull the Blue Suns off Omega. They’ll be back, but not for a while.”

“So let’s move,” said Melanis. Sensat nodded next to her and stole a sip from her cup. “I say we take out the Blue Suns now, while they’re off-balance.”

Garrus gave her a cool look. “What are the numbers on the Blue Suns right now, Melanis?”

She paused, reaching for her mug. “Uh, two hundred?”

“Two hundred fifty-seven,” said Weaver. She blushed when Melanis glared at her but kept talking. “That’s not counting the ones a few hours’ travel from Omega. They could have almost five hundred here in a solar day.”

Garrus pointed at her. “That’s why we’re not charging in.”

“You don’t think we could take the Blue Suns?” Ripper raised his eyebrows. “We didn’t have any trouble the last time.”

“The last time, we went to their boss’s apartment and terrorized him while he was in his underwear,” Weaver pointed out. “I’m not complaining, because it’s _Tarak_ we’re talking about, but it wasn’t exactly fair.”

“Not to mention the sticky bombs and taking out his guards,” added Vortash.

The squad smirked at each other. Garrus watched them.

All the boundaries had broken down; Mierin wore one of Grundan’s jackets, and Erash and Monteague picked at the same plate of reconstituted scrambled eggs. Butler had an arm over the back of the couch with his hand resting on Vortash’s shoulder. Sensat stroked Weaver’s hair absently.

The enormity of what he created hit Garrus all at once. The idea of the squad as a family wasn’t new; they sniped and fought like siblings, but their loyalty to each other was unquestioned. What he hadn’t considered was the way he stood apart from them out of necessity, like a fond but slightly distant father. He needed distance to command effectively, and never regretted it until this moment, as he sat in his chair watching the squad.

If Shepard had been there -- he slapped the thought down and forced his fists to unclench.

_Focus_ , he told himself, and ignored the sick yearning twisting in his gut.

“Fine,” said Mierin, disgruntled and trying not to show it. “So we won’t go after the Blue Suns all at once. You got any better ideas, boss?”

Garrus waited for Mierin to realize what she had said. It took her two seconds. She coughed and looked away. Sidonis nudged her foot with his. She gave him a grateful, embarrassed smile.

“I do,” said Garrus. The squad watched him, their breath catching at once. No one said anything.

Only Shepard knew the idea had crossed his mind, and she didn’t know how seriously he had considered it. One whispered conversation as he dozed off, then he let it fall to the side, and Shepard never brought it up again. The day-to-day operations took up most of his time, but in stolen moments, Garrus let the idea grow. Over six months, he nurtured it through a dozen incarnations, simplifying it until it become a pure, deadly whole. If there was a flaw, he couldn’t see it.

Lightly, he let the idea float on the air.

“One strike, and we take them all out.”

Weaver covered her mouth with her hand. No one else moved.

“You’re serious,” said Sidonis.

“I am,” said Garrus, a little off-balance. He hadn’t expected this stunned silence. The squad exchanged a flickering series of glances, communicating in some language Garrus didn’t know. He felt another lurch, longing for Shepard, and ignored it. He fixed his eyes on Sidonis. “Why?”

“It’s just...” said Erash thoughtfully, “it’s been almost two years since you got all this started, boss.” His leg jiggled, bouncing Melanis’ head as she leaned on him.

“What’s your point, Erash?”

“We’ve made a lot of headway here. Maybe it’s time to think about exit strategies.” Erash ducked his head as the collective gaze of the squad fell on him. “Taking everyone out at once...that means we’d be done.”

“You all want out?” 

“We talked about it while we were away,” said Mierin. “It’s not that we want out, but boss, we’ve got credits to spare. More than enough for everyone to get off Omega and start over. What we’re saying is, maybe we should start planning the big finale.”

Garrus tapped the armrest of the couch. The sound was muffled through his gloves. Everyone stared at him.

“The big finale.” He turned the idea over in his head, seeing how it fit with his plan to take out every merc on Omega.

Unsurprisingly, it was a perfect fit.

His heart pounded under his ribs. The squad could do it. Not quickly, and not easily, but with the right architecture in place, the plan would work.

The squad waited for his response. He could hear them breathing.

“All right,” he said. “Our big finale.”

“ _And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all._ ” Butler cracked his knuckles. When the squad looked at him blankly, he shook his head. “A bunch o’ heathens, all o’ ye. Revelations, Chapter 18.”

Grundan leaned back into the couch cushions. “Whatever that means. But it sounded good,” he added to placate Butler. The big man growled but quieted when Garrus held up a hand.

“If we’re doing this, we do it carefully,” he said. “I don’t want anyone giving in to temptation or taking the easy way.” The cold edge of his voice surprised him. “If any of you cut corners or do anything less than follow my orders to the letter, you’ll deal with me.” He paused. “You’ll deal with Archangel.”

He let that sink in. Everyone understood Garrus didn’t mean they would face him if they stepped out of bounds. Archangel was more than just him; Archangel was the squad. No one wanted to be cut out of the family; it would be a paralysis of the soul.

He refused to let his mind linger on _souls_.

“The mercs are a cancer” he said. “We are the cure. And we’re going to take them out so completely that none of them -- not a single Eclipse, Blue Suns, or Blood Pack -- will ever set foot on Omega again.”

The air felt charged with restless energy. He wanted to keep going, to plan and set the first stages in motion, but the day-to-day work still waited.

“Weaver has the patrol roster for the day. Before that, I want all of you -- all of you -- in the range for at least an hour. I understand you all want to keep talking about this, but I want you calm. Stay focused, stay vigilant --” he winced inwardly and took a deep breath “-- and we’ll start the work tonight.” He looked around at the squad, the simple weight of his love for them very close to the surface.

The squad sighed as one, the restless energy fading into the cool air. Garrus relaxed. They would be ready, after a day of patrols and work, to start the intricate construction of the end of an era.

He rolled his shoulders. “Dismissed,” he said. The squad scattered, moving with exaggerated care, talking quietly to each other, with more casual touches than Garrus had seen before.

This wouldn’t be the end of just the mercs. The squad would end, too, and they knew it.

An obscure ache settled in his chest.

_Time enough to think about goodbyes when the work is done_. He closed his eyes, just for a moment, and let himself think of Shepard. _Come home,_ he thought, and opened his eyes before he could lose himself in longing.

Shepard stood at the foot of the stairs, her hand on her cheek.

 


	16. Chapter 16

Garrus waited until the squad left the common room before he stood up and made his way to Shepard.

He said nothing, only tilted his head up the stairs and toward their room. She nodded and vanished. Her absence sent a stab of anxiety through him.

_I should have touched her, just in case. Who cares if the squad sees? They’re not even watching._

Shepard reappeared next to him, her hand slipping into his. He gripped it, too tightly at first, and forced himself to relax. They climbed the stairs without looking at each other. Garrus’ legs felt numb, his heart thudded painfully in his chest. The one fixed point was Shepard’s hand in his.

She stepped inside their room and waited for him to shut the door. Her eyes were fixed just over his shoulder. Everything in her posture was a defense, from the stiff line of her shoulders to the way she clasped her hands behind her back. The woman in front of him was Shepard, the Commander, the Spectre, not the woman who guided him and stood guard while he slept.

Garrus waited. Relief numbed him, but underneath moved a slow-building anger. He wanted to make sure he was in complete control before he spoke.

Shepard looked ready to wait him out, but when her gaze slid over his face, the steel in her spine disappeared and she unbent. Her hands came out from behind her back and she reached for him, but caught herself before he had a chance to reach back. He kept his hands at his sides when she retreated. Shepard watched his face, eyes squinted.

“Before I get started, how mad are you?” She folded her arms and cocked her hip. “That way I can customize my apology.”

Garrus ignored the deflection. He read her face. Her mouth curved in a tight smile, the only visible sign of what she felt. No one else understood her gestures and expressions the way he did. Two years of practice had taught him to wait for sincerity.

Shepard sighed and let her arms drop. “Not going to take the bait, are you?” This time, she didn’t wait for a reply. “Garrus, I’m sorry.” She paused and cut her eyes to his face. When he didn’t reply, she sighed again.

“You’re not going to make this easy on me, are you?”

“Should I?” he said. “These past few hours haven’t been easy on me.”

“I know,” she said, as close to contrite as Shepard could get. “If it makes it any better, I didn’t mean --”

“It doesn’t make it better, Shepard.” His voice was so calm it was an insult. “You didn’t mean to disappear the last time either.”

Shepard didn’t flinch, but her expression shuttered. “Not my fault, Garrus,” she answered, in a tone just as flat as his own. The distance between them seemed non-existent a few hours ago; now it opened wide, dismal and empty.

In a dark corner of his mind he was furious, but there were other fights that weighed heavier on his heart.

“What happened?”

It was the only thing he could say that wasn’t an accusation or treading too close to the _how_. Shepard rubbed her cheek and looked away. Garrus took the opportunity to study her profile. Her skin was pale and freckled, but the dead white that lingered after her last disappearance was nowhere to be seen. He relaxed a fraction. Shepard caught the movement and reached for him again. He took her hand and covered it in both of his.

“I saw that woman again,” she began, and stopped when Garrus squeezed her hand. “What is it? Garrus?”

“Nothing,” he said. “No, not nothing. Go on.”

She nodded, hesitating. “I was in the Markets down by the Gozu district. Garm was there.” She gave him her sharpest smile and he let his mandibles flare in response. “You would have loved it, Garrus. They were laughing at him -- _everyone_ was laughing at him. Some asshole asked if Garm had heard that Archangel was dead. I thought he was going to trample everyone in sight. He got himself under control -- he muttered something about a meeting and stomped off. So I followed him.”

She gave him a long, searching look. Back on the Normandy, Garrus had never been able to meet her eyes when she scrutinized him like this. Now he didn’t have any trouble.

Relief crashed through him again, sweet and cool. His anger stayed under the surface, ready to cut into Shepard if he let it. The turian he had been on the Normandy would have used it as a weapon.

He held it back, and it receded.

“I followed him down toward the environmental plant,” she said. “I figured you’d want to know who he met with.”

Garrus nodded.

“Garm kept his mouth shut on the way, so it wasn’t like I could just eavesdrop for a minute and then report back. I had to stick with him. He walked for about twenty minutes before I saw her, watching us from one of those alcoves. She wasn’t even trying to hide.”

A needle-thin chill slipped through Garrus.

“The woman didn’t look at me. She watched Garm -- _glared_ at him. He passed within two feet of her and she -- she hissed.” Shepard shook her head and squeezed his hands. “It was creepy. Then she moved, like someone had her arm twisted behind her, and it looked like she was trying to scream.” Shepard bit her lip. “She said my name, and something about time.”

Garrus let his breath out in a rush. “What did you do?” he asked.

Shepard’s mouth quirked. “I was going to go after her. She knows us, Garrus. She knows _the squad_.” She met his eyes and Garrus realized with a jolt that Shepard was looking for his approval. “I figured that was more important than Garm’s meeting.”

“Yeah,” Garrus agreed. “Then?”

“She wasn’t there.”

“She was gone?”

Shepard paused, lips parted. “No,” she said. “She was right behind me.”

Garrus squeezed her hand.

“You would not believe how fast she moves,” said Shepard. “I turned around for one last look, and she was there.” Shepard rubbed her mouth with her free hand. “She looked terrified, Garrus, even under the burns.”

Garrus knew what that looked like, the scars twisting and bunching as the woman howled.

“She said something I didn’t catch. Day, maybe. Her voice was a mess. I closed my eyes -- I’ve seen worse than her but not up close, not in a long time.” Shepard let her head fall back, her hair fanning over her shoulders. “When I opened them she was gone.”  

***

“That’s it,” said Shepard. “That’s all I remember. She was gone, and I came back here.”

Garrus studied her, balanced between pushing to make sure she was telling the truth and letting it go.

“Where did you go?” Hard as he tried, it still sounded like an accusation. “You were gone for hours, Shepard.”

“I know,” she snapped, bristling. “You think I don’t? The first thing I thought was what you looked like the last time I came back.” She looked away. Her hand curled into a fist between his. “I thought that’s what you’d look like this time too, but when you saw me, you just looked calm.”

“You told me you’d come back. And the great Commander Shepard never lies.” The words tripped out of his mouth, aiming for humor and landing solidly at sarcasm.

Shepard's mouth tightened. “Garrus,” she said, a steely warning in her voice. “I didn’t mean to go.”

He took a deep breath. “I’m tired of hearing that, Shepard.”

She pulled her hand away from his and stepped back until her legs hit the bed. “I’m tired of saying it.” She sat down heavily, her posture melting into soft, defeated curves. “This is the worst part,” she said. “Worse than not knowing the rules, or who the hell that woman is. It’s not being in control of myself. I can’t fight. I can’t help you.” Garrus tried to protest, but a look at Shepard’s face silenced him. “One touch can make me lose _hours._ I don’t know if I just stood there the whole time, or if I got sent God knows where by that woman. It’s bullshit.” Shepard lifted her head and gave him her weariest smile, the one he saw right before they hit Ilos. “The great Command Shepard. Right.”

He crossed the room in two steps, stopping just outside her personal space. Shepard reached out and curled her hand around his thigh. Her touch couldn’t penetrate his armor, but he needed to feel something against his skin. He pulled off a glove and slid his bare fingers through her hair, fascinated, as always, by the way light broke against the strands, and traced the soft, inexplicable curve of her ear with a talon.

“We’ve been through this before,” he told her. “I’ll say it as many times as it needs to be said. You’re with me. I’ve got you.”

Shepard shuddered and slumped even lower, until the fragile weight of her head rested totally in his hand. “Hell if I know what I did to meet you in the first place, Garrus, but I lucked out when I found you again.”

He let her rest against him, pleased beyond telling that she trusted him to see her like this. When her hand crept up to cover his, he took a deep breath. It was his turn to confess.

“I saw her too,” he said. Shepard’s jaw tightened under his thumb, a movement gone in an instant. “She came here, while I was on watch. She told me she was sorry, and that she thought there would be more time. She told me...to be vigilant.”

“ _Vigilant?_ She didn’t happen to say _why_ , did she?”

Garrus shrugged as best he could in full armor. She made a sharp, impatient noise and closed her eyes.

“Did she say anything else?”  

“She said things were moving quickly. Looked like she was in pain, too, by the way she was moving.”

“God. Like we need one more thing to worry about.” Shepard pushed her head against his hand. “Maybe it’s the station,” she said. “Something about Omega. It collects mysteries like that woman. And me.” The bleak thread in her voice returned. Garrus rubbed his thumb over her cheek, following the vanished path of her scars. “Nothing’s ever easy.” Shepard leaned forward until her head rested against his chest. “I guess it was too much to ask that I would stay your only mystery, huh?”

“You’re still my favorite. Mostly because you don’t show up to say something cryptic and then disappear again.”

Shepard laughed weakly. “Those the only reasons?”

Garrus hummed. “Well. There _are_ a few more now.”

He felt laughter vibrate through his armor. “Just a few?”

“Have you given me more than a few? I thought you always had a few tricks saved up.”

Shepard looked up, her new, private smile curving her mouth. “You want to go there, Garrus? When you’ve got an op to plan?”

“You heard that?”

“I did.”  Her smile turned fierce. “Archangel’s farewell.”

***

“Our farewell,” he added. “It’s not just me, remember? It’s all of us.”

Shepard arched an eyebrow. “Us, huh? I don’t remember hearing too many details about this plan.” The explanation Garrus had ready faded when she gave him a wry look. “Don’t trust your spiritual advisor?”

He huffed a laugh and tried to buy himself time by playing with her hair. The truth was that he had no good reason for not telling her; a final act seemed impossible, given what they faced every day. Planning for one was a release, nothing more.

“It wasn’t about trust,” he said. “I never thought it would happen.”

“I’m only teasing you, Garrus.” Shepard leaned back and watched his face. Garrus realized, with a belated shaft of guilt, that Shepard had seen his momentary doubt, and that she laid bare her own disquiet to quell his worry.

“I didn’t mean --”

Shepard cut him off with a shake of her head. She already knew what he was trying to say.

“It’s fine. Once a cop, always a cop, I guess. You see a mystery and you can’t afford to take anything for granted.” She reached up and traced the markings over his nose with her fingertips. He watched her watch him, pupils blown wide, as a shadow crossed her face. After one last brush of fingertips over his mandible, Shepard sighed, resignation in every movement. “If I remembered what happened after she touched me, I’d tell you. I promise.” Her hand dropped away. She could have made him pay for the flicker of doubt; instead, she gave him a promise. Garrus still had a lot to learn about picking his battles. At least he could let this one go.

“I believe you,” Garrus said, and it was true. She leaned her head against his chest again, her hands cupping his hips over his armor. His doubt shivered and broke apart.

Comforting as Shepard’s touch was, it couldn’t stop the roil of worry in his gut. Planning the farewell op added one more layer to an already murky and blurred situation. He needed some guarantee -- as much as he could get -- that Shepard was protected.

“Shepard, if I ask you to do something, will you at least hear me out before you tell me to go to hell?” he asked.

Shepard laughed. “Sure, I’ll bite. What’ve you got?”

“No more patrolling alone.” Garrus felt Shepard lift her head, and kept up his gentle movements in her hair until she relaxed. “I’m asking, Shepard, not telling. But you’ve said you’re stronger if you’re -- if you’re near me. Maybe if we stay together --”

“-- I won’t get yanked God knows where for hours.” Shepard tilted her head to meet his gaze. “You realize that’ll only work if she’s what sent me away, right? We still don’t know for sure if it was her.” She rubbed her eyes.

“Okay,” she said, a moment later. “I’ll give it a try. No more patrols -- unless,” she hesitated, “unless you’re out there. Then I come too. We both get to play the overprotective game.”

“You’re winning,” he said, relief and an absurd fondness bubbling in his chest. _It’s lucky I like her so much. She’d be impossible to love otherwise._

He bent down and pressed their foreheads together. The contact eased some of the tightness in his muscles, the tension he managed to bury rising in his body. “I thought you had left again,” he said. Shepard reached up to loop her arms around his cowl. “I tried to call you back, I thought...”

“You thought what, Garrus?” She pulled away to pin him with her Commander look. “Tell me.”

“I thought you might come if I called you, if you were a - a spirit.”

Shepard blinked at him. “A spirit.”

“I can’t say you’re a ghost, Shepard.” He didn’t hide the way the word felt in his mouth. “A spirit makes more sense...as much as any of this does.”

“Your point?”

“Your scars are gone. You _felt_ the Reave when it hit you. There has to be a reason why.”

“And being a spirit is a reason?” she said reluctantly. “I mean, I feel -- wait, no.” She threw up her hands. “Whatever’s happening _,_ it doesn’t mean I’m a spirit. Didn’t you say spirits are _made?_ I -- I _died._ And what about the woman? How does she fit in if I’m a spirit?” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m arguing metaphysics with you, of all --” Shepard paused, eyes far away.

“Shepard?”

“What if it’s her?” Shepard whispered. “What if the woman’s the spirit, not me?”

Garrus gaped. “You’re joking.”

“Garrus, stop looking at me like that. Didn’t you say that spirits come out of people working together?”

“Yes, but Shepard --”

“You’ve had twelve people -- counting yourself -- working together for almost two years.” In moods like this, inspiration rising off her like mist off a lake at dawn, Shepard was impossible to ignore. She grabbed his wrists, almost hard enough to hurt. “If that isn’t spirit material, what is?”

“You’re talking to the wrong turian, Shepard.” He pulled his hands back and cradled her face. “I’m not equipped to deal with this, you just said it yourself.”

A shadow passed over her face. “You can deal with _me_ being a spirit, but not her?”

“We should consider it.”

“No.” Her voice had all the inflection and color of sleet. “We shouldn’t. We don’t know the rules of this thing, this _whatever_ that brought me back. Hoping I’m anything but dead is a waste of time.” Garrus knew his dismay was clear in his subvocals. Shepard’s mouth twisted, and she changed direction, her voice soft. “What would I be the spirit of? Not the squad, I came before them. Not the Normandy crew either. Everyone’s moved on.” She scrubbed her hands over her face and through her hair. “I’m just me. Just dead.”

_Spirits change, Shepard_. “So you’d rather be dead?” he asked.

Shepard clenched her fists. He leaned forward and brushed her hair away from her eyes, her cool skin still a marvel, still a mystery.

“Shepard?”

“Yes,” she said. “I do. Then I’m still me. Whatever else happens, I’m still Shepard.”

“You could never be anything else.” Garrus wrapped an arm around her shoulder and drew her close. He needed to go check on the squad, but he didn’t want to leave the conversation like this. “Are you really happy with things the way they are?”

“Yes,” she said, certain as gravity. “I’m at peace, I’m still helping people, and that’s more than most get when they die.”

“Even though we can’t really --” He let his head rest on hers, heart-weary, not knowing how to finish.

“You’re not tied to me, Garrus.” Shepard formed her words carefully. “If I disappear again, I don’t want you waiting for me to come back.” If what she was saying hurt her at all, it was impossible to tell. Shepard had carried this alone, mourning the end of _them_ when he had never considered it. The grief had worn its way into her, so deep no one could see it.

“Shepard, we _are_ tied. Haven’t you been paying attention?”

“I don’t want you wasting your life waiting for me if --”

Garrus touched her chin with a knuckle. “That’s crap and you know it.”

“I’m giving you an out.” She shrank in on herself, shoulders hunched.

He tried to ignore his relief when her voice wavered. “You told me being here made you stronger. I’m stronger with you here too. We’re a team.”

She pulled her legs up to her chest and clasped her arms around them.

“You believe me when I say I want you here, right?”

Shepard nodded.

“Then don’t give me an out. I want you with me. Do I have you?”

She nodded again.

“You belong here,” he said. “Shepard and Vakarian.” He moved his head to kiss her. She made a tiny sound that got lost in the air between them. “Stay with me.”

She nodded and touched his face with just her fingertips. “Shepard and Vakarian,” she said.

He stood up and held out a hand. “Come on. I’ve got patrol with Butler, and the squad will start to wonder if I stay up here much longer.”

Shepard’s idea hung in the air, fragile as spun glass. Garrus couldn’t deny its appeal. A spirit -- the _squad’s_ spirit -- meant no threat. Not to himself, not to the squad, not to Shepard.

That left the question of why the woman -- spirit or not -- appeared in the first place. Until he knew that for certain, he’d follow her warning, and stay vigilant.

They had more to say, a welter of complications to parse, but he heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, heading toward his room. For the last three seconds before Butler knocked on his door, Garrus focused on Shepard’s hand in his.

_She kept her promise._

 


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: A friend of mine is posting this update, as I will be away for most of the weekend. Apologies if there are issues! 
> 
> As always, thank you for reading and reviewing! You are all lovely! <3

“Ready to kick some arse, boss?” Butler cracked his knuckles. Garrus repressed a shudder at the sound.

“The only _arse_ that’ll be getting kicked is yours if you do that again.” Garrus flipped open his rifle case, breathing in the faint smells of metal and ozone. It flipped a cognitive switch; a few lungfuls of that smell and he was ready to fight.

“I’m always jealous when I see you with your rifle,” said Shepard. She ran her hand over his back on her way to the door. “Silly, I know, but I wish you’d touch me like that.”

Garrus met her eyes, trying very hard to look suggestive without letting Butler see. Shepard hid a laugh behind her hand.

“Let’s go,” said Garrus, before Shepard could derail his thinking any further. The man pushed off the wall and shifted his SMG into the crook of his elbow.

“Lay on, MacDuff.” He sketched a salute and clicked his heels before heading down the hall, whistling.

“I didn’t understand that reference,” Garrus murmured to Shepard. She threaded her fingers through his and pulled him after Butler.

“Old Earth playwright. Shakespeare. It’s from... _Macbeth_ , I think.” She made an amused little sound. “Something tells me you’d hate that play, Garrus. Don’t ever read it.”

“Noted.” He caught up with Butler at the top of the stairs. It gave him a hot golden glow of satisfaction to feel Shepard’s hand in his, and beneath that, cool relief. _She’s here, she’s here,_ he thought, trying not to smile too widely.

Shepard caught the flicker of his mandibles and put her free hand in the crook of his elbow. “Steady there, boss,” she stage-whispered. “You’re not free yet.”

He squeezed her hand.

Weaver swiveled in her chair as they passed, handing off Garrus’ helmet. “Upgraded the comms and filtration units,” she said. Garrus nodded absently. He pulled off his visor and stowed it, folded neatly, in a pouch on his arm. When he sealed his helmet, the HUD over his left eye zoomed in on Weaver and beeped twice. A half-second later, her biometric feedback scrolled past: heart rate, breathing pattern, even the contractions of her pupils. She grinned.

“You like? I know you miss your visor, so I’m trying to compensate.”

“It’s great, Weaver.” Garrus reached out on reflex and ruffled her hair, a gesture the rest of the squad only used to annoy her. Weaver rolled her eyes, but endured the attention, blushing faintly.

Shepard coughed. _“Dad.”_

Weaver turned back to her workbench. “It’s still got some issues with recording kills, but I’ll fix it when you get back.” She typed a line of code into her omni-tool, settling her headphones around her neck. “Secure channel’s open, boss. I’ll let you know if I catch anything.”

“Happy fishing,” Butler yelled over his shoulder as he snapped his helmet in place. With the HUD still zoomed in, Garrus saw Weaver flip both middle fingers up Butler’s direction. He covered his laugh with a cough as they moved down into the tunnels, and out into Omega.

It had been weeks since he patrolled with Butler, but they fell into the old rhythm easily. Butler hummed to himself, breaking into snatches of song in a rich baritone before lapsing into silence. Garrus knew Butler’s repertoire by heart.

He chose their path at random, taking them past merc haunts and through abandoned ducts, never letting himself set a destination. Staying random kept them alive, and as safe as vigilantes could be.

Butler hummed at Garrus’ side, SMG slung carelessly in the crook of his arm. It was all an act; Garrus knew Butler cataloged every detail of their patrol as efficiently as Erash or Sidonis. He was big, but he wasn’t stupid.

Shepard ranged a few steps ahead, head down with her hands in her pockets. He know that posture by heart; it made Shepard look small and frail around the neck and shoulders, even in full armor. Tali and Kaidan scoffed at the idea that anyone would fall for the ruse, until two batarians decided Shepard was an easy mark.

_Harder to tell who was more surprised, Tali, Kaidan, or the batarians._

Garrus gave himself a mental shake and refocused on the grimy alley around him. He didn’t let himself think about the Normandy crew often. His life was here, on Omega, not on the Normandy.

“It’s too quiet,” said Butler in between songs. “Ye jinxed us.”

“My apologies,” answered Garrus dryly.

Shepard laughed, tossing him a grin over her shoulder. “You’re an ass, Garrus,” she said. “Thank God you’re pretty.”

Butler grumbled to himself. “Not that I’m one to complain’, boss --”

Garrus sighed. “No, not at all.”

“But without Nalah, it’s borin’. Give me somethin’ t’shoot, or I’ll go mad.”

“We’ll have plenty to shoot soon enough,” Garrus said. “Have you heard from her lately?”

“Yeah.” Butler skirted around a puddle. “Two days ago. She and her mam are fightin’ all the time, but she’s got a job in a clinic down in the wards with some Swiss doctor. That should keep ‘em from gettin’ too crabbit with each other.”

“Dr. Michel?”

“That’s the one.” Butler cleared his throat. “Ye met the good doctor?”

“When I worked for C-Sec.” His past was no secret to the squad, but other than Sidonis all those months ago, no one brought it up in his hearing. “She was part of an investigation.”

“The Saren investigation?”

Garrus waited to reply, watching Shepard. She kept walking, nothing in her posture betraying she was even listening.

“Yeah,” said Garrus, finally. “The Saren investigation.”

Butler kicked an empty crate. “My hairy arse it was just the geth. Yer Commander Shepard got the wrong end of the stick. Nalah says I’m just bein’ paranoid, but following my gut’s kept me alive so far. And right now, it tells me there’s more.”

“There is,” said Garrus. _My Commander Shepard_ , he thought. Shepard half-turned her head, and he caught a fugitive glimpse of her eye before she faced away again.

“Want to talk about it, boss?”

“If you’re looking for details, you’ll be disappointed.” Garrus tugged the collar of his armor away from his undersuit. Condensation beaded the walls around them. He resigned himself to feeling clammy until he got back to base. “It happened just the way Shepard said. She didn’t make any of it up. I was there.”

Shepard half-turned again, but kept walking.

“Hell of a woman,” said Butler. “Body like a -- shit, never mind. I feel like I’m talkin’ about yer wife.”

Shepard didn’t react, but Garrus laughed, the sound ringing hollow in his helmet. “She was a hell of a woman,” he said, careful of the past tense. “Hell of a commander.”

“Must have learned a lot from her.” It was impossible to measure Butler’s tone against his expression. Garrus sighed.

“Two years we’ve worked together, Butler, and you’re just asking about this now?”

“I’ve been curious, yeah, but...”

“But what?”

“If we’re comin’ up to the end, I’m not gonna get another chance. I didn’t before because I didn’t want to piss ye off. Now it doesn’t matter if ye get mad.” Butler chuckled. “A few weeks, maybe months, and we’re all gone.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that.”

“What? We go all in on a ship and start rightin’ wrongs all over the Terminus?” Butler let out another tired chuckle. “Nah. When we’re done, I’m out. I promised Nalah. I’ll have enough saved, won’t have t’ work, and we can get started on a family. I’ve made her wait long enough.” He clapped Garrus on the shoulder, hard enough to make him stagger. “Whatever great thing ye do next, boss, it’ll have to be without me.”

“Sorry to hear it. Just make sure you keep Weaver away from your kids, Butler.”

“Bite your tongue! I have enough nightmares as it is.” Butler’s laughter boomed over the comms.

“Give Weaver one. Tell her you’ll name your daughter after her.”

“Or son. Weaver works for both.”

They walked in silence. Garrus watched Shepard’s hair gleam under the faint lights. On the Normandy, her hair always smelled like soap, even under the smells of blood, sweat, and metal. The smell mixed in his memory with the waxy scent of the balm she used on her lips and hands. She rubbed it into her skin after every mission, massaging it into the web of skin between her thumb and forefinger.

Thinking about Shepard’s hands appealed to him much more than thinking about the crease his armor wore into the backs of his thighs. Thinking about what Shepard’s hands could do -- had done -- appealed to him even more, though it didn’t leave him in the best mental place for patrols. Reluctantly, he pushed away the memory of clever fingers and focused on the rhythm of his steps, Butler’s playing counterpoint.

“Did she ever tell ye her first name?” asked Butler.

“It’s E--” Garrus froze as Shepard turned around, eyebrow arched. She shook her head, the private smile slipping across her mouth. “Weaver’s first name? No,” he corrected. “You?”

Butler hadn’t noticed his slip. “Nah. Sidonis and I even checked the records, and wouldn’t ye know it? She _erased_ it. Just says “Not Applicable” now.”

They shared a comfortable laugh and lapsed into a well-worn silence as they walked, eyes front. Garrus felt himself warming to Butler, more than usual. He had been the first to join, with bloody fists clenched under a wide grin, and he never faltered. If the squad broke up, the quiet patrols ended. The morning and nightly meetings, the shared meals, the casual touches: all gone.

It was the right choice. The squad could fight for the rest of their lives, but they deserved freedom.

 _So do I_ , thought Garrus. On the heels of that, he realized he’d never considered a future after Omega. Beyond the distant threat of the Reapers, his life had been contained on the station for the past two years, focused on the present. His life had been the squad, the work, and Shepard.

What could come next for the two of them? Palaven, to see his family? Searching Tali out on the Migrant Fleet? Risking his neck and visiting Wrex on Tuchanka?

 _Virmire,_ he decided. _We’ll go to Virmire, and see if Ash is there. It’s possible. And even if she’s not, we’ll say goodbye. After that, we’ll go exploring. Find something interesting. Maybe something interesting will find us._

Shepard ran her fingers through her hair. He watched the movement, a small part of him still amazed she was back at all. His thoughts seemed to arc through the air between them. She turned around as she passed through a bar of light, her skin and hair illuminated. Garrus’ heart clenched, hunger and love twined so closely they couldn’t be separated. Shepard watched him with the smile teasing the corners of her mouth, her eyes hot as she drank him in.

The middle of patrol was no place for revelations, but that didn’t stop Garrus from having one.

She was tied to him, _forever._ Till death and onward.

Shepard watched him, impatient and kind -- and yes, even beautiful. _Finally_ , said her smile. _You finally get it, Garrus._

_I do._

Weaver’s voice crackled over the comm. “Boss? Butler? Got something for you.”

The moment broke apart and vanished into the air.

“Thank God,” sighed Butler. He shifted his SMG and checked the thermal clip. “Please let it be Blood Pack, haven’t killed one o’ them in weeks.”

“Not sure -- I’m picking up weird comm chatter from the Gozu district. Sounds like strange things are afoot at the Circle K.”

“Is that code?” Garrus asked, irritation creeping into his voice. Human cultural references were beyond him; Weaver tended to use them at the worst possible times.

“Sorry, boss. Bad joke. There’s a lot of interference down there that close to the environmental plant, but I’m zapping the coordinates to your ‘tools.” She paused. Garrus heard her suck in a breath. “Uh, looks like it’s near Nalah’s old clinic. And I’m hearing vorcha. Lots of vorcha.”

Butler laughed, entirely without humor.

Shepard raised her eyebrows. “God,” she said. “His mods are already kicking in. That was fast.”

“Want me to patch you in, boss?” Weaver’s voice wavered, and not just from static. Butler in full Berserker mode was terrifying even from a distance.

“No.” Butler wasn’t going to wait. “You sure it’s just vorcha and not Blood Pack?”

“I’m sure. Blood Pack would’ve announced themselves. These are just scavengers. No trouble for you guys, but for the clinic --”

“Yeah. All right, Weaver, stay patched in. I’m letting Butler off his leash.”

“Copy that, boss. Good hunting.”

Shepard met his eyes across the alley and nodded.

_I’m with you._

He glanced at Butler. “We’re fifteen minutes away.”

“We can make it in twelve,” said Butler. His voice was tight, the adrenalin thickening his words until they were almost unintelligible.

“All right then, twelve,” said Garrus, and stopped talking. He needed every breath for running.

***

They made it to the clinic in just over ten minutes, but they were too late.

The smell of charred flesh and urine overpowered their armor’s air filters. Garrus smelled the rich salt-tang of blood and tried not to gag.

“Ah, Jesus,” said Butler around a thick tongue. “This is a fuckin’ mess.” He shuddered. Garrus didn’t envy him the headache and sore throat that came with the Berserker mods.

“Agreed,” Garrus murmured, looking down at the trail of bodies.

At the sound of their voices, a dark-suited figure turned its head.

“Friend or foe?” asked a thin salarian voice.

“Depends,” Butler panted. Garrus pushed him back with a hand on his chest.

“Shut up and stay back until you get yourself under control, Butler,” he hissed over the secure channel. Butler growled but obeyed, taking a step back to stand flush with the wall. Shepard moved up to flank the salarian, eyes on the door leading to the clinic.

Garrus keyed the open channel. “Friend,” he said. “We came to help.”

“Appreciated but not necessary,” said the salarian cheerfully. “Problem handled. Vorcha never expected a doctor to be a threat.” The salarian regarded Garrus, tapping his mouth with a finger. “Not mercs. Don’t smell like smugglers. Don’t smell sick either. Hard to tell through armor. Not moving like you’re sick. Weapons and armor well-used, custom modifications. Human and turian alliances on Omega, not long-lived outside of merc groups. Must be...” The salarian threw his hands in the air, radiating satisfaction. “Archangel.”

“Damn,” said Shepard, and whistled. “Did he breathe at all?”

“Archangel,” Garrus confirmed.

“Yes. Couldn’t be anyone else.” The salarian holstered his pistol and straightened up. “Assistance appreciated, but redundant.”

“So it seems.” Garrus counted at least seven corpses in the hallway, and a shadow that might be an eighth at the end of the hallway. “Impressive,” he said, nodding at the dead vorcha.

The salarian shrugged, unbothered by the fact that he couldn’t see Garrus’ face, or that Butler still panted and shuddered against the wall. “Thought I was harmless. Were mistaken.”

“Big time,” said Shepard. “I count five headshots out of eight, Garrus. Not bad for a doctor. I guess Erash and Sensat aren’t outliers.”

“Are your patients safe?” he asked.

“Completely. Armed guards at clinic.”

“But you came?”

“Of course. Only one who could get job done. Now must get back to work. Body disposal simple. Incinerator in back of clinic.” He shook his head at the vorcha. “Such a waste of evolutionary abilities.”

“We’ll leave you to it,” said Garrus. Compassion for vorcha. Now he had seen everything.

The doctor waved him away, his attention fixed on the corpses. A moment later, as Garrus, Butler and Shepard rounded the corner, he called out.

“Archangel!”

Garrus turned back.

“Dangerous mission. Possibly stupid. Risk of injuries great. Come here if help needed. Will help, discreetly.” The salarian nodded at Butler. “For our mutual friend. Tell guards Mordin told you to come.”

Shepard elbowed him. “Looks like you made a friend.”

_Looks like._

“Thanks, Mordin. Much appreciated.”

“Happy to help.” Mordin grabbed one of the corpses by its feet and started to drag it down the corridor. Garrus turned away, just in time to watch Butler crumple slowly to his feet.

Mordin dropped the corpse and moved lightly to Garrus’ side, peering down at Butler. “Not good,” he said. “Daniel! Aurelius! Assistance required!”

Garrus rolled Butler on his back. The human’s entire body was limp, dead weight, but his biofeedback readings were steady, if weak.

“He’s huge,” said a turian in a medical tunic as he rounded the corner. “Let me guess, Berserker mods.”

Garrus nodded. “Full complement.”

“Dammit,” sighed the other assistant, a human male with reddish hair and beard. “They’re notoriously unreliable. We’ll have to sedate him.”

“Not till you check for hemorrhaging,” said Mordin. “Get him into private room before removing armor. Privacy, privacy. Follow me,” he said to Garrus.

It took Mordin and both assistants to get Butler onto a cot. Garrus tried to help but Mordin pushed him back, gentle and implacable.

“Sit,” said Mordin, pointing at a chair. “Stay out of wayl” He sent his assistants away with a wave and set to work on Butler’s armor.

“Not expecting to see you so soon,” said the doctor cheerfully. “Mods giving him trouble. Not surprised. Berserker mods unreliable, like Daniel said. Long-term use leads to neural damage, toxin build-up. How long have mods been in use?”

“How long?” Garrus looked up. “Uh, two years. At least.”

Mordin made a short, disgusted sound. “Should be replaced every six months. Poisoning himself. Vigilantes! High aspirations, terrible execution.”

Garrus felt obscurely insulted. “We do good work,” he snapped. Mordin shone a light in Butler’s eyes and waved his free hand.

“Good work on Omega. Battle never ends. Personal responsibility too heavy, makes for stupid mistakes.” He jabbed a finger into Butler’s chest. “Case in point.”

Hard as he tried to come up with one, no reply came. Garrus leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was, but moments after he sat down, he was asleep.

***

Someone knocked on his helmet. Garrus swung his arm on reflex, but the someone stepped deftly away and knocked again. A headache started to throb at the base of his skull, courtesy of the stale air in his helmet and the awkward position of his neck.

“Off, off,” said Mordin. “Now, please.”

With a groan, Garrus pulled his helmet off, too tired to worry about protecting his identity. After breathing triple-filtered oxygen for hours, the musty, cool air of the clinic felt coarse in his lungs.

“Why are you examining me? I’m fine.”

“Why not? Head back.”

“Head back where?” He swallowed and winced at the taste of his own mouth.

“ _Tilt_ head back.” Mordin sighed and pushed Garrus’ head back with a finger under his chin. “Open mouth.”

Garrus obeyed absently. He looked around for Shepard, and found her in a corner, arms folded over her chest.

Mordin muttered under his breath and pushed Garrus’ mouth shut. “No mods?”

“Just the standard turian military mods. Anti-radiation, inoculations --”

“Vaccines for sexually transmitted illnesses?”

“Uh, yes.” Garrus smiled weakly, casting another glance at Shepard. She did a fair job of resisting a smile.

“Good, good,” said Mordin. “Just exhausted. Stress of self-appointed position. Recommend rest. Safe for you to leave. Have to tend other patients.”

“What about Butler?”

Mordin sniffed. “Extreme case. Surprised reaction didn’t show up sooner. Will need to keep for detoxification and upgrades to modifications.” Shepard glanced up as Mordin spoke, but still refused to meet Garrus’ eyes. He couldn’t angle himself to force her to look without Mordin noticing. Frustration mounting, he pushed himself up.

“Thanks,” he said, a little stiffly. Mordin waved away his thanks, already impatient to get back to work.

“None needed. Will have Butler contact you with progress updates. Discretion top priority.”

“Appreciated.”

Mordin smiled thinly. “Can accept help. Pride not a failing. Good to know. Makes you dangerous.”

“And here I thought it was just the rifle and years of training,” said Garrus, with a last glance at Shepard.

Mordin chuffed laughter. “No, no. Those just accessories. Pride makes you stupid. Not proud, not stupid.”

“Right,” said Garrus. His head throbbed. The walk back to the base stretched out ahead of him. Tempting as it was to ask Mordin for painkillers, he resisted. He already owed the salarian enough. “Tell that to the mercs.”

“No need,” said Mordin. He bent over Butler again, who snored on his cot, pale but peaceful. “Go now. Not safe to linger. Get rest.”

Garrus nodded, not sure what else to say. He decided on silence, and risked another glance at Shepard.

“Hallucinations going on long?”

Shepard’s head lifted, eyes wide, and met his gaze across the room. Garrus felt a familiar needle-thin dread slip through him. He steadied himself before he replied.

“Hallucinations?” he asked, keeping his voice light. “Isn’t that worth keeping me for?”

Mordin made a graceful gesture. “Not particularly severe ones. Barely worthy of the name. While asleep, talked to someone named Shepard. When awake, looked around room. Not hard to surmise: still grieving for old commander. Sentimental. Not threatening.” He sniffed. “Not interesting either.”

Shepard shifted, ever so slightly.

“I...see.” Garrus tore his eyes from Shepard’s with an effort and focused on Mordin. “Any suggestions?”

“Let go,” answered Mordin without a pause, without looking up. “Shepard gone. Death sad, but insurmountable. Best not to hold on to grief. Waste of time. Remember good she did. That is enough.”

Shepard looked like someone had slapped her.

“Thanks for the professional opinion,” said Garrus. “I’ll take it under advisement.” He slid his helmet on and breathed in filtered air as the seals closed. Mordin’s reply was almost lost.

“You won’t. Tied to past.” Mordin sniffed again. “Sentimental.”

***

“I’m sorry,” said Garrus, just as Shepard said “Don’t apologize.” Silence between them stretched out, thin as crystal, sharp enough to cut. Garrus reached out and hooked his fingers around Shepard’s elbow.

“Keep patrolling?” asked Shepard. “Or home?”

_Forget worrying, just for now. Time for that later._

“Home,” he said. “I’ve had enough of Omega for one day.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course I couldn't resist a nod to Babylon 5. Of course.


	18. Chapter 18

Garrus’ headache burst into full, ferocious life when they got back to the base. Too many bright lights, too many voices clamoring for news.

“Enough,” he growled as soon as his helmet was off. Weaver scooped it out of his hands and retreated to her workbench, already focused on upgrades. “Unless someone wants to explain why Butler never bothered to mention his mods were out of date, get back to work.”

The squad scattered, except for Sidonis. He hovered behind Garrus, the faint sour smell of his worry cutting through the pain in his head.

“Was it that bad?” he asked. “Butler’ll be okay?”

“He’ll be fine,” Garrus answered. “We were close to Nalah’s old clinic, so I left him with her boss.”

“The salarian? Spirits, he’s crazy, isn’t he?”

 _Among other things._ “He might be crazy, but he’s solid. Butler’s going to be fine.”

“Yeah, thanks. I just wanted to know. Thanks.” Sidonis shifted. “You okay, boss?”

“I’ll be fine. Grundan and Ripper are patrolling? Where are they?”

“Uh, Diulo District, last time I checked.”

“Tell them to come on home.” Garrus paused as a vicious throb sliced through his head. Shepard slipped her hand into his and let him squeeze her fingers until the pain receded. The sour smell thickened, but Sidonis kept his silence while Garrus steadied himself.

“Once everyone’s in and fed, we’ll start talking strategy.” His armor chafed against his cowl. “I’m going to hit the showers.”

“Got it.” Sidonis moved off, taking the smell of his distress with him, murmuring into his comm.

Garrus rubbed his mandibles. Without his visor or helmet, he felt naked, but the thought of any extra weight made the headache send spikes of heat through his head.

“Shower.” Shepard nudged him gently. Without her arm around his waist, he would have tripped over his own feet before he got to the stairs. He missed the top step and leaned on her briefly, closing his eyes. She held his weight, her free hand gripping his arm. When he was steady enough to go on, she tugged him toward their room.

Her fingers stuttered over the seals and clasps of his armor, but she managed without needing his help. His undersuit gave her more trouble; he heard her swear as she tugged on his tunic.

Finally, his clothes were off. Shepard ran her palms over his carapace. “You go get started,” she whispered. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

He stumbled into the shower, navigating the gloom with a hand on the wall. For once, the water was cool and not slimy. He stood under the stream with his head tilted back, mind a blank. Shepard’s hand on his back made him jump.

“Sorry,” she said. “I can go, if you want.” She already knew his answer, and a moment later, he felt her hands sliding over his cowl. He leaned his head against the wall. Shepard wrapped her arms around his carapace and linked her hands just above his waist.

“Oh,” he gasped as her body pressed against his back. “You’re --”

“I am.” She wriggled closer, all cool, naked skin. “Not a hint, don’t worry. Just feels good.” She rested her head against the back of his cowl and stroked his carapace, her fingers sliding over the fresh-healed scars.

“Should I get the oil?” she asked. Garrus barely heard her over the water.

“Not now. Just...stay with me.”

“Okay.” Shepard nestled closer. “I never want to leave you, you know.”

“I know.” He tilted his face up into the spray. His headache began to recede. Shepard’s hands moved in lazy circles, a low hum in her throat. Garrus breathed slowly and let the stress leave his muscles.

Shepard laughed against his cowl. “Enjoying yourself?”

“Mhm.” He trapped her hands with his and stroked her wrists with his thumbs. “Nowhere I’d rather be.”

“Not sniping mercs from three hundred meters? Not sleeping?”

“Maybe sleeping. But only if you’re there to watch.” He turned around. “No time for that now.”

“Have to present your big plan.” Shepard stepped into the circle of his arms and stretched on tiptoe to kiss him under the jaw. He shivered, almost missing her smirk. Desire sparked in his belly, so fierce it made him dizzy. The air nearly crackled with how badly he wanted her.

“You know exactly what you’re doing, Shepard.”

“Always,” she said, and traced the spot she just kissed with the tip of her tongue.

He placed his feet carefully on the wet tiles and scooped her up. Shepard giggled -- _giggled!_ \-- and kicked her feet.

“I’ve never heard you make that noise before,” he said, all fake amazement. The pretense distracted him from the heat in in his groin.

“Smart ass,” Shepard said, her voice muffled as she licked his neck. He stumbled when she nipped at the skin underneath his mandible.

“A-ha. That’s what you get.”

Garrus managed to get to their bed without incident, and dropped her to the mattress. “You know, if I fall, you go down with me.”

Shepard rolled over to make room as he climbed next to her. “Thought that was obvious.” Her hand slipped past his carapace, over his waist, and stopped just above the plates at his groin.

“Is there time?” she asked. She bit her lip and looked away, but he caught her expression before she hid behind her hair.

“There’s time,” Garrus answered, and kissed her till he was breathless.

***

Later -- long enough to lose track of time -- Garrus groaned. “I have to get up,” he murmured into Shepard’s hair. She sighed and unwound her legs from his. His clothes lay in a pile at the foot of their bed, where he dropped them, but his armor was sealed away in its case. He turned to thank Shepard, but her face was hidden behind her hair as she pulled her underwear over her hips. She didn’t see.

He dressed without talking, enjoying the warm silence between them. His worry seemed very far away, and very small, too.

“Are you ready?” asked Shepard. “It’s your big moment.” She watched him from their bed.

“The moment belongs to everyone.” Garrus fastened the last clasp of his casual clothes and looked at Shepard in his mirror. “You too, even if only I know it.”

“Strange how they’ve just accepted you knowing things. No one’s ever commented, and they’re not stupid.” Shepard tilted her head and smiled. “They want to believe the legend of Archangel too.”

“Legend?” Garrus coughed, embarrassed. “I’m no legend.”

He waited for Shepard to make a joke, but she kept her elliptical smile in place and didn’t reply.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”

Shepard’s smile slipped away as she caught the rough edge of his subvocals. “You really don’t want it to end, do you?”

He shrugged, any melancholy fading beneath the bright pleasure he took in Shepard understanding the nuances of his voice. “It’s like you said, Shepard. I don’t know who I am without a gun in my hand.”

“You’ll figure it out,” she said. “But that’s not all of it. You’ll miss them.”

 _Except for Weaver_ , he tried to joke, but the words got lost somewhere between his head and his mouth. For all the distance -- necessary distance -- between himself and the squad, he _knew_ them.

He knew no one liked Erash’s cooking, but no one would ever say so. He knew Weaver never threw away the Blasto action figures that Sensat and Sidonis bought for her, even though she claimed she had. Everyone knew Vortash was in love with the sisters, but Garrus was the only one who knew which of the sisters loved him back. They had no secrets from him. It felt like a cheat to keep one from them, even if that secret was Shepard.

“Of course I’ll miss them,” he said. He tugged on his gloves. “I’ve led them for two years, Shepard. Even if we stay in touch after this, it’s not going to be the same. Butler will have his family, and the rest -- they won’t be the squad anymore.”

“Name one of them who wouldn’t drop everything if you asked for their help,” said Shepard. “You did more than lead them. You gave them something to fight for, a chance to get justice, but you gave them a family. They won’t forget that, or you.”

A burst of laughter from the common room saved him from having to reply. _If this is the end,_ he thought, _then we’ll make an ending no one will forget. Not the mercs, not us._

“Come on, Garrus,” said Shepard. “Time to get started.” She followed a step behind as he went down the stairs. The squad went quiet when they saw him, faces lit with tentative excitement.

“We’re ready,” said Monteague.

***

Garrus took his seat.

“It all boils down to math,” he said. “There’s twelve of us, and hundreds of them. We need a way to wear them down, so we’re going to use their numbers against them.”

The squad waited.

“They’re all running scared -- Blue Suns, Eclipse, Blood Pack. We’ve personalized it for each of them, and no mistake, they’re gunning for us. But what they won’t expect is a squad that fights two wars at the same time.”

Melanis chewed her thumbnail, but none of the others moved.

“Starting tomorrow, three patrols will go out. Each patrol has one job: find a merc, kill them.”

“That’s it?” said Sensat. Erash elbowed him, hissing.

Garrus grinned. “The next day, they find two, and kill them. The day after, three,” Garrus leaned back. “I’m talking clean kills. Precision assassinations. I don’t even want them to see us.”

“Huh,” said Sidonis. “And then four, and five. At the end of the week, eighty-two are dead.”

“Eighty-four,” said Ripper.

Sidonis balanced his foot on the opposite knee. “Whatever. That takes out a big chunk of the mercs, but guerrilla kills’ll take too long.”

“That’s part one,” said Garrus. “We have to herd them where we want them first.”

“Ooh, more psychological fuckery,” said Weaver. “It worked pretty well with Tarak. Blue Suns were never gonna leave, but they’re so freaked they haven’t been able to mount any major operations.”

“Exactly. After one week of that, we bring in the second group.” Garrus let his mandibles flare wide in a hungry, vulpine grin. “The heavies.”

Loyalty was a hit-or-miss concept with the big merc groups, especially in the lower levels, but a common fear always acted as a great equalizer. Once the mercs realized they presented easy targets in small numbers, they’d band together in groups.

“This is where you get creative.” Garrus pointed at Erash and Weaver. “I don’t care about subtlety, I want whatever you’ve got that will rack up the body count, fast.”

“We’re the shock squad, in other words,” said Erash.

“Hell yes.” Weaver punched his shoulder. Erash grinned through a wince.

“Wherever they are, we hit them. Numbers won’t keep them safe, and they already know we can find them if they try to hide.” The memory of Tarak cowering in bed threatened to make him laugh, but Garrus resisted. “We’ve disrupted their shipments, freed their slaves, wrecked their ships. We’ve never taken the fight to them before. As long as we keep hitting them on two fronts, they won’t get back up when we knock them down.”

“What about the smaller groups? The Talons, and the freelancers? That’s another hundred mercs on the station.” Melanis bit through her thumbnail with a crack.

“Leftovers,” said Vortash.

“Not leftovers,” Garrus corrected. “If the opportunity strikes, take them down too. Our focus has to be on the main groups. They’re the ones who can call in major reinforcements.”

“I think I’ve got something that can help with that,” said Weaver. “Even when the mercs change comm channels, they still use the same shorthand. It’s specific to each group. As long as my hacks stay active, I can track key phrases. If they call for help, we’ll have enough warning to make docking here a really bad idea.”

“Then stay on the hacks. Sensat, Grundan, Ripper, you’re on the Shock Squad with Erash and Weaver. You’re looking at high-risk infiltrations, so I need you ready to move fast and light. No heavy weapons. Stick to pistols and SMGs.”

“We’ve got some surprises in the latest combat drones,” said Erash. He leaned forward,his hands clasped in front of his face, eyes focused on the ceiling. “Shield blockers, jamming tech --”

“Good. Get them tested and installed.” Garrus shifted. He wished he could see Shepard, but but he felt her presence at his back. For now, it was enough. “Now, the Kill Squads.

“Mierin, Melanis, you’re on Blood Pack. Reave the bastards and pick them off while they’re down.”

“Singularity won’t hurt either,” said Mierin. She gave her sister a tight, fierce smile.

“Vortash, Sidonis, you’ve got Eclipse. Keep the vanguards at range -- same as always. Get the combat drones from Erash, you’re going to need them.

“Monteague, you’re with me. We’ll take the Blue Suns.”

“Fuckin’ A” said Monteague. “I was so sad I missed out on Tarak in his unmentionables.”

The squad started shouting, a chorus of insults all aimed at Tarak. Garrus laughed, surprised by a sudden, sharp burst of affection.

“All right, all right, enough,” he said, still laughing. “Save it for when he’s dead. He’ll be easier to laugh at then.”

As the squad quieted, Sidonis turned to Garrus. A whiff of the sour smell of worry made its way into the air. Garrus knew what Sidonis was going to ask before the other turian’s mouth opened.

“What about Butler?”

“For now, we work without him.” Garrus let himself grin. “But when he’s back, I think he’ll fit right in on the Shock Squad.”

***

Sensat flopped back against the couch cushions, boneless with exhaustion. “Damn,” he muttered.

Garrus stretched. His neck ached from bending over the table for the past four hours, but his head felt scooped clean and peaceful. “All right,” he said. “We’re good.” The squad dropped their stiff postures and fell against each other, yawning and reaching for water bottles or coffee mugs gone cold.

Weaver shut down the three-dimensional map of Omega’s interior. “I’ll upload this to your ‘tools,” she said. “The first two rounds of Shock Squad sites are marked, along with the new patrol routes.”

“So don’t get careless and forget which sectors are no-go zones,” said Garrus. He looked around the room. “Questions?”

The squad shook their heads. The strain of planning showed on everyone’s faces. Putting muscle and skin on the skeleton of Garrus’ plan had worn them out.

“Get some sleep. We start early. Mierin, you have first watch.”

As the squad filed away, arguing over who had first right to the showers, Garrus slouched in his chair and glanced to his left. Shepard smiled at him from the stairs, the slightest curve of her lips.

 _Can’t wait to see what she thinks_. It was a challenge not to grin back.

“Boss?” Sidonis hadn’t moved from his seat on the couch. His tunic lay bunched over his cowl and carapace, and he smelled nervous.

“Sidonis?” Garrus rubbed his neck. 

“Got a question. Not about the plan. You have a minute?”

“Sure.” Garrus shifted to rest his cowl against the back of his chair and waited while Sidonis gathered himself.

“You’ve got a plan for what happens after Omega, right?”

That was not the question Garrus expected. A rill of unease went through him, and he told himself to tread lightly.

“Not much of one,” he said honestly. “I’ll worry about that when Omega’s clean and we’re all safe.”

Sidonis bobbed his head in a nervous nod. “It’s just -- I was thinking. I don’t have anywhere to go, really, and I was wondering -- if you need help, whatever you’re going to do, I’m there.”

Garrus heard Shepard’s satisfied laugh. He focused on Sidonis’ pebble-green eyes.

“You’re asking to keep working with me?”

Sidonis gave him the nervous nod again. “Yeah. I am. I mean, you do good work. I want to keep helping, you know?”

“Told you,” said Shepard, the first time she’d spoken since they left their room. “A legend already.” Her voice was serious, no hint of teasing now.

Garrus considered. He’d thought the other turian wanted what the rest of the squad wanted: a fresh start, free from grief and hopeless fury. To find out that Sidonis wanted to keep going -- well, that was a surprise.

Of all the squad, Sidonis was the only one who’d been clear about why he wanted to fight the mercs on Omega. The Eclipse killed Kavalix, and Sidonis hadn’t been there to save him.

Anger could be a powerful motivator, but Garrus had seen Sidonis when he faced Eclipse. Grief fueled him, not anger, and it made him controlled, precise. For all his jokes, Sidonis had learned how to make his emotions work for him, as armor.

“To be honest,” said Garrus carefully, “I haven’t decided what I want to do next.”

Sidonis leaned forward, the sharp citrus tang of anticipation surrounding him. How humans got by without pheromones was a question he would never answer. By the way Sidonis’ posture relaxed slightly in disappointment, he knew Sidonis had smelled the faint, musty scent of refusal, and he softened what he was going to say.

“Our focus needs to be on following the plan through to the end. Once the mercs realize this is more than just disrupting them, they won’t stop until we’re just smears on the wall. When that’s done -- then we’ll talk, Sidonis.”

Sidonis nodded. He didn’t like the answer, but he recognized the refusal, and the inferred order to _wait._ No one but a turian would resist the urge to argue.

“Anything else, Sidonis? There’s a lot of work to be done.”

“Nothing, boss.” Sidonis’ disappointment shaded his subvocals briefly, then he straightened, focus returning to his gaze. “Thanks for hearing me out.”

“I mean it,” said Garrus, surprised by the sudden urge to reassure Sidonis. “We’ll talk.”

“Provided we’re all alive,” laughed Sidonis, his skewed good humor returning. “Thanks.”

He nodded and watched Sidonis walk toward the kitchen. The empty common room settled into dry silence around him.

“That was well-handled,” said Shepard. Her hand fell on his shoulder, and he reached up to stroke her fingers, a single fugitive touch. “Am I missing something with him? Is he --?”

Garrus glanced at the kitchen. Sidonis’ back was to him. He pitched his voice low, barely a thrum in the air.

“He’s not,” said Garrus. “It’s a turian thing.” He imagined Shepard’s expression: the twist of her mouth, the arched eyebrows, and hid a smile. She would make him explain later, not resting until she peeled back every layer of meaning, squeezed him for every nuance.

Making her wait was all part of the game. It frustrated her to not have all the information she wanted, as soon as she wanted it, but a frustrated Shepard was an interested one. He took a risk, teasing her out like this, but he was tired, and her bright regard -- her _interest_ \-- made the exhaustion fall away.

She wove her fingers through his. “Watch the mercs, Garrus. Fear makes people stupid, but it makes them creative, too. And you're about to terrify them.”

“I know,” he murmured. Garm’s voice echoed in his head.

_I’m gonna find your little toadies, Archangel, and when I do, I’ll feed you their eyes._

His stomach lurched. “Once the Kill Squads go out tomorrow, we can’t stop until every merc is dead.”

Neither of them said _Or until we are_ , but it echoed between them.

 


	19. Chapter 19

Time did funny things when the world narrowed to what you could see through a rifle scope. Garrus couldn’t remember how long he crouched behind the old cargo loader, but the batarian had finally taken off his helmet. Ten meters closer, and Garrus would have taken the shot, helmet or no. The extra distance made him wait. 

He breathed in and held the air in his lungs. The batarian turned to face Garrus, yelling to someone out of view. Garrus was too far away to hear what the merc said. 

“Hope they were good last words,” said Shepard.

He squeezed the trigger. The merc stumbled and collapsed, a tiny hole above his left eyes. 

“Six,” said Monteague over the comms. 

Garrus lowered his rifle and waited. Another shot rang out, loud over the comms, and Garrus watched a body tumble out of the cargo containers, blue and white armor spattered with red. At his nod, Shepard blinked out.

“Seven,” he said. “We’re all through here, Monteague. Meet me at the ducts. I want to be at the base before the Shock Squad moves out.” 

“Copy that.” 

Garrus swung down to the warehouse floor and waited for the heat shimmer at his side. He didn’t wait long. 

“Everything’s quiet at the front of the warehouse. They don’t have a clue.” Shepard gave him a hard little smile. “But they will, as soon as they radio back and don’t get an answer.” 

Monteague was already in sight, so Garrus contented himself with a nod in Shepard’s direction. 

They ignored the bodies. Garrus made it clear that these hits weren’t for credits or mods. Wherever the mercs fell, the squad left them alone. 

This was about the _message_. 

As Garrus approached, a patch of flecked gold on Monteague’s back caught his eye. He tilted his head to zoom in, and saw two wide-spread wings surrounding a human letter “A”. Shepard grinned at the corner of his vision. 

“That’s new,” he said. “Had some free time, Monteague?” 

The man shrugged. “We all did it. Figured, what the hell? The mercs know who we are, so why hide it? If they get close enough to see it, either they’re dead or we are.” His eyes, dark and almond-shaped, met Garrus’ through their visors. “You said it, boss. Archangel’s an army.” 

The sad, fierce pride twisted in Garrus’ chest. “I can’t argue with that,” he said. “Punch in the hack.” 

Monteague knelt over of the duct, omni-tool glowing. “Fuck this,” he grumbled. “I miss omni-gel.” 

“Which leaves traces,” said Garrus. “Weaver’s hack won’t, not obvious ones.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Monteague stood and silenced his omni-tool as it beeped. The duct’s cover slid open in a blast of sewer air. A ladder, corroded and covered in slime, disappeared into the dark. The human gestured expansively. “After you, boss.” 

Garrus rolled his eyes and swung down to the first ladder rung. He hoped his shower was working. 

Monteague climbed down after him and sealed the duct cover back in place. The golden wings on his back shone briefly in the darkness.

*** 

Back at the base, the golden wings greeted Garrus wherever he looked. He wanted to warn against them -- too much like tempting fate -- but Weaver interrupted, bearing down on him like a tiny dreadnought. Her relief at finally being allowed out of the base surrounded her in a near-tangible halo. 

“According to the hacks, we’ve got Blood Pack heading toward Afterlife, Blue Suns in the markets down in the Yalsis District, and Eclipse at the docks, waiting for some novices to arrive. All groups of ten or more,” she said. “Orders? 

Garrus considered. “Eclipse first,” he said, as Weaver made a note on her omni-tool. “Take out the novices too. No sense in wasting the opportunity.” Shepard nodded at his side. “Then, Blue Suns. There’s a lot of dead-end alleys in Yalsis. Herd them with the drones and then block the entrance.” 

“And the Blood Pack?” asked Sensat. 

“Wait till they’re away from Afterlife. Aria will know what we’re doing soon enough, but I don’t think she’d look favorably on it happening on her doorstep.” He raised his voice. “That goes for everyone. Whatever we do, keep it out of Afterlife.” 

“Right,” said Sidonis. “Don’t fuck with Aria.” 

The Shock Squad laughed. Garrus met each of their eyes, and gave them a nod. “All right, move out. Anything goes wrong, you come home. No risks -- we made it through the first week, but the mercs are scared. And desperate.” He felt Shepard’s eyes on him as he echoed her. “Kill them and get out. Good hunting.” 

“Good hunting!” they replied. Weaver led them into the tunnels.

The kill count stood at eighty-four. The first week was almost over. 

*** 

“So,” said Shepard. She leaned against the wall of the shower, watching him. “I’ve been watching Sidonis.” 

“I noticed.” Garrus hit the shower control with his elbow and hoped for hot water. What he got was a spray slightly warmer than his body temperature. He leaned his head back and waited for Shepard to keep talking. She’d stayed silent on the subject of Sidonis for a week, far longer than Garrus expected. If she had chosen to give in now, it meant she had her observations and wanted him to fill in the gaps. 

“I get that turians are more casual about sex, at least until they’re done with civil service.” 

“Someday,” said Garrus, turning his head out of the spray, “you’re going to tell me when you had time to do all this research while we were chasing down Saren.” 

Shepard ignored him. “Rank doesn’t always have to be an obstacle. So is that what’s going on here? Sidonis has a thing for you and --” 

“No.” Garrus turned to face her. “It might have been, once, but I never let him get far enough to know for sure.” 

Shepard frowned -- not from jealousy, Garrus knew, but from _not knowing_. She hated being denied information the way most people hated insomnia. “When did that happen?” 

“You were gone,” said Garrus. “After the mechs.”

“Ah.” Shepard looked away. “So how did that play out?”

“He told me I was stressed. Before he said anything more, I cut him off. I wasn’t exactly in the mood to be comforted. 

“Is that typical? A subordinate just offering like that?”

“You know we’re not a typical outfit, Shepard.” Garrus scratched under his fringe with a talon. “It’s not typical for a turian crew either, but I’ve seen it happen. Your superior officer starts to show stress, and one of the crew offers to help. Sparring, drinking, gambling, sex. They offer whatever they’re comfortable going through with, and the officer chooses.”

“So Sidonis could have been offering five-card stud for all you knew.”

“Whatever that is, yes.”

Shepard laughed. “Well, I guess I can stop being wildly jealous, now that I know it’s just general hero worship.” She cocked her head at him, looking every inch a woman who never needed to be jealous in her life. “Cultural education done for the day? 

“If you’re finished.”

“I am.” She bent at the waist and skimmed the lids of the jars at her feet. Garrus felt a strange, quiet pleasure in her movements -- not in just the rise and falls of bones under skin, but in the balance of grace and efficiency. She looked up at him through her hair as it fell over her face. Her hands lingered over the jars. “May I?” she asked.

So like Shepard to always leave him an out, even if they both knew now he would never take it. He nodded and turned his back to her, waiting for the cool touch of her hands, slick with oil, harsh with sand.

***

Garrus expected the Shock Squad back in eight hours. They arrived just after the six-hour mark, sweaty and weary, but satisfied. He met them in the mouth of the tunnel, finally giving in to his worry, needing to see for himself that they were safe. Shepard stayed at his side. For once, she kept her dad jokes to herself 

“Those were some surprised asari, boss,” said Sensat as he unsealed his helmet.

“And batarians, and turians, and humans,” sighed Grundan. He rolled his shoulder back, wincing, but pushed Erash back when the salarian tried to examine him. “Enough, Erash! I’m fine." 

“Let him have a look,” said Garrus. “You all need to be in peak condition. No exceptions.” He stared at Grundan until the batarian stood still. Garrus turned to Weaver, who looked flushed and triumphant. “Report.”

“It’s lucky we caught Eclipse when we did,” said Weaver. She fell into step at Garrus’ side, her helmet slung under her arm. “Seven novices were on that shuttle, fresh from Ilium. We picked up some intel while we were getting into position. Red sand shipments that’ll be coming through soon, nothing that’ll get in our way.” She ran her hand through her hair. “Are Mierin and Melanis still up?”

“Melanis is on watch, Mierin was awake before I came down. Why?”

“Heard something weird. The novices were talking about an Ardat-Yakshi. Never heard about it before, and I didn’t have time to check the extranet. Thought they might know.” 

They started up the stairs, the rest of the Shock Squad falling in behind them. 

“Anyways, the Blue Suns were buying replacement parts for a gunship, as well as a replacement mechanic -- took care of those easy.”

“No sign of Cathka?”

She shook her head. “No sign of Cathka. We’ll get him. Oh!” She snapped her fingers and yelled over her shoulder. “Grun, who’s that salarian with Eclipse? Amron?” 

“Amirron.”

“Right, thanks.” She turned back to Garrus. Shepard peered around him, face intent. 

“What about him?” asked Garrus. The door to the common room opened, the lights blinding after the gloom of the tunnels, and Monteague’s welcoming yell echoed off every wall. Sidonis cheered from the stairs. 

“Remember how he and his brother were shipping tainted eezo through Omega?” At Garrus’ nod, Weaver grinned wolfishly. “We got Amirron. Sensat took him out.”

Garrus grinned back. “Impressive. Good to know that little bastard’s out of the picture. And Blood Pack?”

Erash spoke before Weaver could open her mouth. “Not really a stretch for us,” he said. “We waited till they left Afterlife -- well, got thrown out. Once they passed into the Jakartil District, Ripper and Sensat hit them with micro-grenades. They ran right into the corridor we’d laced with tripwires and delayed charges.”

“Boom, boom, boom,” said Ripper, then added “ _boom_ ”, for emphasis.

“Solid work,” said Garrus. “What’s the final count?” 

“Forty-one,” said Weaver. 

Garrus blinked. “You’re sure?” 

“We counted the bodies,” said Grundan. “Forty-one’s the total.”

Shepard hummed. “Garrus,” she said, “at this rate...” She didn’t need to finish. At this rate, with this much luck, they were looking at less than a month before they were finished.

Garrus took a deep breath. “Update the count,” he said, pitching his voice to carry through the whole base. “One hundred twenty-five dead.”

The squad cheered, tired but proud, golden wings spreading wide as they lifted their arms.

*** 

On the second night Garrus spent hunched over his omni-tool, listening to Weaver’s hacks, Shepard dropped into his lap and kissed him resoundingly, eyes bright when she pulled away. 

“What -- ah? Not that I’m not grateful, but what was that for?” 

“To congratulate you. Two years on Omega.” She kissed him again. “I’d say happy anniversary, but it’d be in poor taste.” 

“Two years?” he said blankly. With a flick of a finger, he turned off his omni-tool and leaned back, rearranging Shepard so she rested against his carapace. “I didn’t think I’d lost track of time like that.” 

Shepard shrugged, leaning her head on his shoulder. “You’ve been busy. And it’s not exactly two years since you got here, but since...I found you.”

_Two years._ He hardly felt like the same turian who stumbled off a shuttle, bleary with grief.  _I’m not the same turian_ , he thought, pulling Shepard closer. She came with a low hum in her throat, molding her body to his sharp angles. _Not even a little._

If Shepard was thinking about how it was more than two years since she died over Alchera, she didn’t say, and Garrus didn’t either. 

“We’re going to need to revise the timeline,” he said softly. “We’re looking at two weeks at the most before the mercs won’t have the numbers to deal with us.”  

“Unless they pool resources,” said Shepard, muffled against his neck. “You’ve considered that, right?” 

“I have. All comm traffic says the Blue Suns and Eclipse are still furious with Garm for his... _casual_ relationship with the truth. They’re even angrier now that Archangel’s not just alive but wiping them out.” He closed his eyes. “It’s possible, but unlikely. Years of fighting each other over the Districts would have to be put aside, and I don’t see Garm convincing his krogan to side with turians or salarians. Even if it meant taking us down.”  

“Good reasoning,” said Shepard. “But you need to be --” 

“-- vigilant,” he finished. They shared a quiet laugh. The burned woman felt very far away. Any menace in her words couldn't travel the distance intact. 

“I’ll tell Weaver to monitor for anything that sounds like an alliance,” said Garrus. “Can’t be too careful.” 

Shepard nodded. “Almost there,” she said, her voice relieved. “Then we’re done.” 

Love pierced him through the center of his chest, hot and swift. The low ache in his gut -- the one that was pure desire, and never went away -- sharpened as Shepard shifted, her breasts pressing into his carapace as she moved. 

“I’ve got two hours before watch,” he murmured, close to her ear. 

“You could sleep,” said Shepard unconvincingly.

“I will,” Garrus answered. “After.” 

Shepard flicked open the clasp of his tunic.  

***  

“Is it wrong to feel good?” he asked Shepard afterwards as she curled into him, her legs slung across his. “The plan is working. As long as we’re careful -- I think we can pull this off.” 

She nodded. Her hair tickled the soft hide inside his cowl when she moved. “Just stay careful,” she said. “It’s one thing to be proud of good work, but don’t get --”  

“Don’t get cocky, I know.” He rubbed his cheek on the top of her head. “We’ll never get rid of every merc or smuggler, but we can make them think twice about coming here. Maybe give Omega a chance to be something more. That’s all anyone can ask for.” He stared into the dark, remembering. “It’s what you gave me, in Dr. Michel’s clinic. After you were done shouting at me.” 

Shepard laughed. “Yeah? What was it I gave you, Garrus? Other than a bunk on my ship and something to shoot at.” 

_A family. A mission. An adventure._  

“You gave me the chance to be more,” he said. “More than a failed C-Sec officer or a disappointing son. I’m better with you around, Shepard.” 

Even in the dark, Garrus saw Shepard trying to smile and frown at the same time. “I love you,” she said, quiet but fierce. 

*** 

Patrolling was a dull business with the mercs dug deep in cover.

“This was a fucking waste of time,” said Monteague. “Three hours of walking, and nothing to show for it. Give me some shit to shoot.”  

“Take two extra hours in the practice range, then,” said Garrus, without sympathy. 

He planned on spending the extra time in the practice range with his pistol. His hands were too used to the weight of his rifle; as much as he loved it, in close quarters it would only be good as a bludgeon. One that wasn’t equipped to explode on impact. Time for the pistol.

_No sense in getting lazy_ , he told himself. _Not even if we’re close to the end._  

Decision made, he focused on Shepard as she ranged ahead of them, head bent and hands in her pockets. The nape of her neck glowed in the dim light, pale and vulnerable.

She felt him watching and gave him their private smile over her shoulder, then tipped him a wink. He ducked his head to the sound of her laughter, his neck flaring hot under his armor. Sidonis would have commented, if he’d been there, and he’d certainly be able to smell the sweet, grassy smell of Garrus’ quiet happiness. But his partner was Monteague; the human’s nose was weak, its owner inclined to silence. Garrus left him to his thoughts as they walked.

Sidonis met them at the front door, sober and quiet. The sour crackle of worry surrounded him. Garrus wrinkled his nose.

“Weaver’s picking up something odd on the comm channels,” Sidonis said, without preamble. “You need to hear this, boss.” 

“Mercs calling for back-up?” Garrus asked. They had plans for that, but if Weaver had missed the transmissions --

“No, not yet, but...” Sidonis shrugged helplessly. “It’s weird. The stuff she’s picking up is coming from off-station.”

“Something we should be worried about?”

“We -- we don’t know, boss.”

When Sidonis turned around, Monteague already following him, Garrus looked back at Shepard. She shook her head.

“No idea,” she said.

Garrus swept his hand down her arm, and she gripped his fingers as they followed Sidonis.

The squad huddled around Weaver at her workbench. Some of them still held their guns, fresh from the practice range. The air smelled like spent thermal clips and sweat. 

Weaver bent over her omni-tool, punching in a long string of numbers and muttering as she worked. “It’s not a rogue VI,” she said, to no one in particular. “I ran scans for malware embedded in the ship’s operational suites, but nothing showed up.” 

“Drugs,” said Grundan. “My money’s on drugs.”

Erash jumped in before Grundan could keep going. “What causes hallucinations for humans and turians? We haven’t heard anything, unless Weaver missed something --” 

“And I haven’t,” said Weaver sharply.

“-- then drugs are out. Which doesn’t leave much.” Erash tapped his chin. “Can’t be nerve agents either.”

“What’ve we got?” said Garrus. 

The squad looked up in unison, except for Weaver. She didn’t glance up from her omni-tool, fingers flying over the display. “I’ve been going through the hacked transmissions Vortash recorded yesterday, and I found this. Came from a turian smuggling ship, the Chanteris, as they tried to dock.” She keyed in another series of commands and leaned back in her chair. A beat of silence went by before the recording played.

_“-- telling you, it was right there, by the elevator, just watching --"_  

_“Aw, you’re full of it, there’s no one there.”_  

_“Spirits, someone was there! No markings, just black armor and -- and white eyes!”_

_“White eyes.”_

_“White! Just look, it’s right there --”_

Weaver cut off the recording.

“That’s not all,” she said. “I thought it sounded weird, so I set up a program to monitor for similar phrases. Can’t be too careful, right? I figured if it was some new drug we should know before it hits. An hour ago, I got this.” She punched in another line of code and a new recording crackled through the air. 

A human spoke, his words raw with jagged-glass panic. 

_“I swear to God, Mike, I’m not crazy! I keep seeing this guy down by the shuttle dock. Big dude, scarred as hell, and his eyes -- man, I’m telling you, his eyes are fucking white. Nothing in ‘em, just white.”_

The world lurched. The room, the squad, even the dust-motes in the air, shifted off-center for the space of a heartbeat, long enough for Garrus to sense a vast architecture behind the order imposed by the living. 

Dark and seething, it stretched as far as he could see, the horrible geometries rising up until they disappeared. He smelled smoke and salt, and heard a low, warm susurrus as the shapes moved. 

He felt no fear.Apprehension, yes, as the shapes formed and reformed endlessly, and a certain sanctified wonder -- but no fear. 

_What have we done, Shepard?_ he wondered, briefly, before the world reasserted itself, and he pushed the thought away.

“Enough,” said Garrus. Years of self-control let him hide any outward reaction as his heart pounded and his pulse thundered in his palms. Shepard pressed close to his side. His hands felt numb, useless clumps of flesh and bone at the end of his arms. “Enough, Weaver. That’s all I need to hear.”

Weaver cut the connection and watched him. The entire squad watched him. Garrus felt an obscure need to push Shepard behind him, away from their gazes, and shoved it away. 

_It will move very quickly now_ , said the burned woman.

“Keep recording the feeds from off-station,” he said, careful to keep his voice steady. “It’s not a priority now, but we’ll need to know how wide-spread this is. I don’t want to be surprised by an epidemic later. Nothing happening here on the station?”

“We tracked the vorcha. They settled down by the markets in the Gozu Districts, scavenging for their collections. Whatever that means. Vortash and I will keep an eye on it.” Weaver started typing on her omni-tool. “I’ll let you know if anything else comes up, boss.”

“Let me know if any more of these...hallucinations show up, especially on the station. Two are interesting, three are a pattern. Till then, we focus on the mercs.”

As Weaver turned back to her workbench, Garrus raised a hand to get the rest of the squad’s attention. “This changes nothing,” he said. “We’ve a plan, and we can’t afford distractions.” He felt the squad’s nervous energy buffeting him like a heavy wind. Shepard’s presence at his side balanced him, held him upright as the world tried to shift again.

“Shock Squad, be ready to move out at 1500. No changes there. Vortash, take over the hacks while Weaver’s gone.” His calm, measured words soothed the squad. The light shiver in the air faded as their control reasserted itself. 

“As for the rest of you,” he said, “I want you in the practice range. Secondary weapons only today. I need all of you sharp.” He checked the time on his omni-tool. “It’s 1200 hours now. I’ll take the watch until 1800. Then Sidonis, then Melanis. Clear?” The squad nodded. “Good. Dismissed!” he said, with steel biting into the ends of his words.

They dispersed, focus returning to the job at hand, and he sighed quietly to himself. Shepard squeezed his hand. He squeezed back, and didn’t let go when they walked to the bridge and the base’s door slid shut behind them.

“Well, shit,” said Shepard. She chewed her lip. “You saw it too?”

Garrus nodded.

“ _The end is where we start from_ ,” said Shepard. She chewed her lip again and faced him. “That was --”

“-- home,” he finished, barely audible. “For her. And you...you’ve been there before.”

Shepard squeezed his hand. “Once was enough,” she said, her eyes closing briefly. “Dammit. We have enough to worry about. Forget this, unless she shows up again.”

Garrus shifted. The shapes moved on and on in his head, vast and patient. “Or more of them come.”

Shepard stared into the distance. “Yeah, unless that.”

 


	20. Chapter 20

Three days passed without word or sign of the white-eyed figures. The burned woman, if she still lingered, didn’t make an appearance.   


Three days brought the kill count to almost four hundred.   


The mercs begged for help from off-station. The refusals came quickly. Garrus listened to the hacked transmissions, fists clenched tight, and let himself hope.   


_We’re almost there. Almost done._   


He kept his focus on the present. The mysteries could wait until the work was done.   


***  


“We need a better name,” said Erash, as the night’s meeting broke up. He slouched down in the couch cushions. “We’re not a Shock Squad when the mercs start screaming as soon as they hear the first explosion.”

“We could be the Squad of Eternal Sadness,” suggested Grundan, with a rare twist of sarcasm.

“No way,” said Weaver. Her good mood only intensified the more she was outside the base. “We’re the Shockers!” She folded her third fingers against her palms and brandished her hands at Grundan. Ripper and Monteague laughed; at Garrus’ side, Shepard tried not to smile.

“If that’s as crude as I think it is, no,” said Garrus. Weaver pouted, and he ignored her with an ease built from long hours of practice. “Anything else to report?”

“Weaver caught part of a transmission from that new group of vorcha,” said Sensat. “But they cut comms before we got a fix on where they were headed.”

“Probably recruited for the Blood Pack,” said Sidonis. He reached around Weaver to hand her and Grundan steaming coffee mugs. “Pulling resources from off-station. Smart move. Vorcha come cheap, and they die cheap too.”

Sensat nodded. “That or they’re going to try and make it as scavengers, and we can ignore them.”

“Either way, I want them tracked.” Garrus tapped his armrest with a talon. “The vorcha we found down by Mordin’s clinic weren’t Blood Pack, and we still don’t know why they were headed there. Don’t assume anything.”

Weaver blew steam off her mug. “I’ll keep scanning. Vortash can monitor the hacks while I’m gone and let you know if we pick them up again.”

“Good.” Garrus resisted the urge to grin at Shepard and looked up at the squad. He’d saved this for last. “I’ve got some news for all of you. Butler will be back tomorrow.”

Mierin squealed and clapped a hand over her mouth while the rest of the squad laughed. Their relief broke over Garrus in a cool rush. He held up a hand for quiet, fighting a grin.

“Before there’s a fight over who gets to come as an escort, it’ll be me and --”

“Surprise,” said Butler, as the doors to the tunnels opened. Garrus’s timing was perfect.

Sidonis let out a roar and ran across the common room in two strides, slapping Butler on the back, the shoulders, the head, anything within reach. The rest of the squad followed, shouting hoarsely and hugging each other when they couldn’t get to Butler. 

Shepard cocked an eyebrow at him. “Never thought you could be theatrical, Garrus.” 

“Blame Butler,” he murmured back, knowing none of the squad was paying him the least attention. “All his idea.” His hand brushed Shepard’s; she took it, weaving their fingers together close to his side. As they watched, Butler scooped up Weaver, one arm still around Sidonis’ shoulders and gave her a smacking kiss on the cheek. Melanis laughed, until he dropped Weaver and gave her the same treatment. 

“As charming as this is,” Garrus shouted, “there’s still work to be done!” 

“So you’ll not let us go radge, boss?” Butler’s accent was double-thick, and the gleam in his eyes could only be tears. “I just got back.” He looked years younger than the last time Garrus had seen him, red-cheeked and well-rested. Garrus said a silent thanks to Mordin; without the doctor, the mods would have left Butler useless or worse.

“Save the party till the work is done,” said Garrus. “Kill Squads, we move out at 0830. Shock Squad, be ready to move at 1500. Butler, you’re in the practice range with me tomorrow when I get back. I know you want to get back to work, but until I’m satisfied, you’re home.” 

Garrus expected a token argument -- it wouldn’t be Butler if the man didn’t push, just a little -- but he just grinned and saluted. 

“Aye, boss!” 

Garrus nodded. His grin stretched his mandibles so wide his face ached. “Get some rest, everyone. We’ll celebrate when it’s over." 

The squad moved as one up the stairs, laughing and shoving each other, the relief rolling off them in clear, sweet waves. Garrus watched them go, the obscure ache in his chest sharpening.

“I still can’t believe you managed to keep it a secret from them,” said Shepard. “You’re a sly dog, boss.” 

“It's nice to have a surprise mean something good for a change. And thanks to Mordin, we're back to full strength." 

“Too bad you couldn’t recruit him.” 

“First you want Aria’s ex-girlfriend, now another crazy salarian? I’ll stick with who I’ve got, thanks. Too late for new members now, anyways.” Shepard leaned into him.  


“Things are moving so fast,” he murmured absently.

“You think this is what she meant?” asked Shepard. “The end of the squad?” 

“I don’t know, Shepard.” He rubbed his neck. “We haven’t seen her in weeks. Maybe she’s gone. Maybe she’s on some ship, haunting someone else.”

Shepard hummed, eyes fixed on the squad’s room. Garrus knew better than to think she believed it any more than he did.

*** 

Faint music woke Garrus, a bell-voiced asari singing about a lover lost on the sea.

“Shepard?” His voice, sleep-rough, sounded very small in the dark room. 

“I’m here,” she said.

Shepard stood at the window, staring through the half-open slats in the metal curtain. The distant, blue light from the stairs bathed her face and chest, her arms folded just below her breasts, the slight concave curve of her belly. Her freckles stood out, faint constellations on her skin. He’d been surprised to find out they covered her entire body: hips, thighs, shoulders, feet.  

No living being ever stood so still, not breathing, not blinking. An inward, clockwise shudder ran through him. It was so easy to forget, after two years of watching Shepard laugh and near-cry, of holding her and seeing her move, that she was dead. She tried to be as alive as possible for him, and what she couldn’t hide she used as a tool to help him. 

She wasn’t hiding anything now. This was her truth. His heart clenched, remembering the woman who could never stop moving, who breathed and sang and fought. 

“What are you thinking?” he asked. 

“Grapes,” she said. “They were the last thing I ate before the Normandy was hit. They were freezer burned, no flavor at all. Liara told me they looked like something she’d find in a tomb on one of her digs, but I ate them all. I’d been craving them for months.” She lifted her head into a bar of light. “I’d kill for grapes right now.” 

“What brought this on?” 

“I don’t really know,” she said, and shrugged. “I just thought about what it was like. Being hungry. I can remember it, but I can’t feel it.”

Garrus stayed quiet. He knew the cadences of her voice, and she wasn’t finished.  

“I thought that I’d forget what it was like to be alive after a while, but it’s still perfectly clear. Never thought having a good memory would be a curse. I remember being cold. Sweating after a run. The exact weight of my gun in my hand. Waking up. Having a sore throat. And grapes.” She laughed, the sound balanced between resignation and regret. “All of it.”

Garrus swung out of bed and padded over to her. He touched her slowly, _scapula_ and _coxae_ and _clavicle_. 

“I’ve got you,” he said. His throat closed before he could say anything else, and his hands tightened on her bare shoulders, talons pricking at her skin.

Shepard traced the line of his mandibles. “I’ve got you,” she said.

Neither of them spoke until the song changed. A human girl’s voice filled the air, thin and sweet and naive. Shepard tilted her head, a smile slipping over her mouth. 

“My mom used to sing me this song,” she said. “She loved the original version, the one from the twentieth century. Been years since I heard this version, though. It’s nice. This singer was just a kid when she recorded it. God. So strange to think this version came out twelve years ago.”

Garrus linked his hand with hers and pulled her to the bed. “What are these lyrics? ‘Time makes you bolder, even children get older’? It’s a horrible song for a child to sing.” She followed him slowly, letting their joined arms stretch out to their full length before she climbed up behind him. He pulled her leg over his waist and eased her down, his hands sliding up to play against her ribs.

“It’s a horrible love song too, Garrus. But most of them are.” She kissed him, lingering at the corners of his mouth. “They don’t tell you that there are no happy endings. Every love story turns into a tragedy. Someone always leaves, or dies, or doesn’t get to love the one they should.” 

“You don’t mean that.” He let his forehead rest on hers. “We’re not a tragedy.”

Shepard laughed. “We started as one, Garrus. I’m dead, remember?”

“Other than the Reapers, then there’s no way it can get worse.” He kissed her this time and she pressed into it, whispering his name.

*** 

Garrus woke up gasping. The bed next to him was empty, the covers still wrinkled in the shape of Shepard’s body.  

“Lights,” he said, wincing when they came on, too bright and cold. His terminal hissed  static until he stumbled out of bed and shut it off. The room was just as empty as the bed.  

“Shepard?” He kept his voice low, wary as ever of the squad overhearing. “Shepard, you there?” 

No answer. 

“You better not have wandered off,” he said. “We agreed.” He stooped and picked up his tunic and trousers. When he was dressed, he peered into the shower. No Shepard. 

“Shepard,” he growled, “this isn’t funny. If you can hear me --”

Garrus stopped. A new sound, huge in the gathered stillness of the room, plucked at his hearing. Someone was crying nearby. Dry, gasping sobs. The noise twisted in the air. 

“Shepard?” He smelled the first traces of worry rolling off his hide and tried to ignore them. “Shepard, is that you?” He couldn’t believe Shepard could make such a sound, a sound that went on as he went into the hall. It hung like smoke in the air. 

“Shepard, answer me.” 

The crying came from off the common room, in the hallway that led into the tunnels.

_Don’t be Shepard. Don’t be Shepard. I can’t handle it if she’s making that noise._

Two steps would take him into the hallway. He couldn’t see, couldn’t bear to see. Stale, stark dread mixed with worry. His own scent made him sick. 

“Shepard,” he called again. Her name corkscrewed out of his mouth. No one, nothing, should sound so wrong when they cried. 

“Shepard.” Now he was begging. The sobs kept going, jagged runnels of noise that made his gut churn. “Shepard, please, answer me.”

The sobs paused for a instant, long enough for Garrus to relax before they spun out again, wracked and hopeless. 

He turned the corner. 

The burned woman knelt by the door, her face turned toward the wall. She cradled her hands against her chest. 

“Couldn’t,” she gasped. “Couldn’t.” 

Garrus reeled back. “You,” he rasped. His voice was as sour as his scent. “Spirits, what have you done? Where’s --”  

“Couldn’t stop it,” the burned woman whispered. She pressed her face into the wall. “I tried. I tried and this, this...” Her hands twitched and his eyes followed the movement helplessly. The skin over her fingers was cracked and blistered, raw fever-red at the joints. 

“Hurts,” said the burned woman, and sobbed again. “No time and I tried. Tried so hard, all broken inside. Couldn’t stop it.”  

“Shut up,” Garrus hissed. He tried to take a breath but his throat squeezed pinhole-tight. “Shut up, you freak.”  

The burned woman twisted her neck, white eyes fixing on his face. She seemed to be taking back control of herself.  “ _Your_ freak,” she said. “I am your freak, my Vakarian. All of yours.” Sobs wrenched her body, twisted it into broken angles, but her voice was steady. “I tried to warn you.”  

“Warn me? Warn me of what?” His voice stayed barely above a whisper, drowned by the wail building inside his head.

She shoved herself to her feet, head weaving from side to side. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I did my best. But you know we can’t interfere.” She held up her hands. “You see what happens when we do.”  

“Where is Shepard?”

“You know where. Over the hills and far away,” said the burned woman. She stumbled toward him, blindly groping for his hands. “I’ll remember,” she told him. “I promise. It will help.” 

Garrus tried to move away, but her hands gripped his wrists, steel-strong. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. Be brave.” Her mouth peeled itself open and he saw the dark hollow tunnel of her throat. “Be b--” 

Her words cut off, blasted away by an agonized scream that clawed its way out of her chest. Garrus jolted as pain crashed into his nerves, shuddering up his arms and into his spine. It poured out of the burned woman, into the vessel of his skull, raging and full of fire --  

He shut his eyes as he staggered, a black seething wave of nausea dragging him down. 

When he opened them, the hallway was empty. 

***

Garrus gripped his head with both hands. 

_Stay focused. Stay sharp. Remember to breathe._

Garrus forced himself to move. 

By degrees, with muscles dry and aching, he straightened his back and lowered his arms. 

_Breathe_. 

He threw his head back to force open his throat, and sucked in a great lungful of air. Clarity pierced the fog trying to wrap itself around his brain, a sudden starburst that stung his eyes, but he could move again. 

_I will not go back to where I was. I am Archangel._

Shepard never called him _Archangel_.  

A thin thread of noise, stretched and fraying, slipped out of his mouth. The sick gut-wrench of fear sat heavily inside him. She promised. She had promised to come back. 

He nearly called her name, in a perfect rush of despair, and stopped himself just in time. 

“I’ll wait,” he said, when his voice was under control again. “I’ll wait. Five days. I’ve done it before.  I won’t worry until then. Five days, and then I’ll -- I’ll --” 

There was nothing to say.  

“Five days,” he said. “Five days, Shepard.” 

*** 

Time fought Garrus for every second; he clawed seconds of clarity away from panic’s steady beckoning, cobbled them into minutes and hours of productivity. He divided his day into sections: three hours on patrol with Monteague, two hours in the practice range, two hours listening to the hacked transmissions.  

That still left almost eight hours before the nightly meeting, when the squad gathered close, sharing food and the stories of the day. 

He considered sleep or a shower, but that meant time alone in a room gone cold and still. And time alone --  

His hands clenched as a long stutter of gunfire filtered up from the practice range. Without any input from his brain, his body lifted him out of his chair and carried him on stiff legs toward the noise. 

“Get ripped!” yelled Mierin, and fired three shots at the practice targets.  

“No, it’s more like this. _Get rrrrrrrrrrripped!_ ” Vortash rolled the r, and Mierin collapsed laughing, tears squeezing out of the corners of her eyes. 

“Oh Goddess, you sound just like him. Do it again!”

“ _Get rrrrrrrrrrripped!_ ” 

Mierin flopped belly-first out of her crouch, giggling helplessly. “Can’t -- breathe --” she gasped, holding her stomach. Vortash sucked in a deep breath. 

“Get rr-- oh, boss!” 

“Vortash,” he said, a faint smile flexing his mandibles. “Mierin. Enjoying yourselves?” 

“Too much,” wheezed Mierin. “We were having a contest but then we started --” 

“Mocking your squadmates,” Garrus suggested, his smile feeling more genuine with every word, less like a mask. 

“We’re impersonating people we know,” said Vortash. “Anyways, we’re seeing who’s better with the Mantis.” He squinted at Garrus, grey teeth flashing in a guileless grin. Garrus folded his arms; that smile, guileless or no, was the first sign of Vortash’s hustle. 

“You want in, boss?” The batarian’s smile sharpened. “Seventy-five credits says we can take you.”

“Two against one, Vortash?” 

“What can I say? I like those odds. You in?” 

From the floor, Mierin flashed a bright, too-sweet smile. “Come on, boss,” she wheedled, the same way she tried to whine him into getting a lapdance. “It’ll be fun.” 

The knotted fear in his stomach loosened. The squad couldn’t erase the dry, ripping sobs of the burned woman, or the awful chill of his empty bed, but their voices -- bright, clear voices, as dear to him as air or water -- smoothed the raw edges. 

“One hundred credits,” said Garrus. “And we use the Mantis.”  

Mierin cackled and rolled onto her knees. “You first, boss,” she said, waving at the rifle expansively. “Show us how it’s done.” 

“Scoped and dropped!” yelled Vortash. Garrus ignored him, and crouched down, feeling the weight of the rifle in his hands. 

The memory of Shepard stealing kisses between shots surfaced: dizzy, seductive, riding at the crest of a wave of longing. 

_Four more days_. 

He closed his eyes, counted his heartbeats until the wave passed through him. 

“Boss?” Mierin shifted. “Boss? Whenever you’re ready.” 

Garrus opened his eyes. Shepard wasn’t there. 

His finger squeezed the trigger. 

*** 

The first and second days passed the same way, forced into order by the sheer strength of his will.  

Garrus dreamed of Shepard, her cool hands cradling his face, but when she tried to speak, nothing came out but a weak, high note, like the winter winds over the mountains at home. 

*** 

The third day fought him with teeth and claws, every bloodless, stricken second of it.

Garrus’ hands started shaking after ten hours. He kept them tight around his rifle, until the joints ached and swelled.   

“You’re fucking quiet,” said Monteague. “It’s weird as hell. Something bothering you, boss?”  

“Nothing more than usual,” Garrus lied, bitterly aware of the irony. “Just thinking ahead.” He was doing everything in his power to keep from thinking ahead. “Let’s check Yalsis District. Weaver said the hacks picked up Eclipse trying to buy supplies from the market there.” 

“Right-o.” Monteague’s imitation of Butler’s accent was flawless. “Lead on, MacDuff.” 

“Lay on,” Garrus corrected automatically. Monteague laughed, the sound made tinny by the comms. 

“Oh, now you’re a Shakespeare buff? Excuse me for fuckin’ living.” 

Garrus looked up, searching for Shepard’s sly, pleased grin. Its absence left him breathless. He squeezed his rifle until the pain in his hands turned steel-sharp and briefly overrode the weary ache in his chest.  

“Weaver,” he said, voice tight.  

“I’m here, boss,” she replied at once. “Need me?”  

“Got anything more on the Eclipse in Yalsis?” 

“Nothing new since they moved to the warehouse, sorry. They haven’t left, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“What’s the size of the group?” 

“Um.” He heard Weaver clicking her teeth. “We’re looking at seven, maybe ten, tops.” She paused. “Biggest group you’ve seen in a while, guys. Want me to get the Shock Squad together?” 

“Not this time.” Garrus felt his focus narrowing, the bright elusive clarity of a plan forming. “Where are Vortash and Sidonis?” 

“I’ve got them over in Jakartil District, boss. Mierin and Melanis are closer.”  

“Send them our coordinates.” Garrus glanced at Monteague, who cocked his head, his confusion evident even through his helmet.  

“Isn’t this something the Shock Squad should take care of, boss? Ten’s a lot to take on at a distance, even if the sisters come along.” 

“The mercs are here,” said Garrus. “If we wait until the Shock Squad gets here, we’ll lose them.” He tightened his hands again, willing himself to focus. 

_Is this the best way, Garrus?_ asked Shepard in his mind. _Is it?_  

_You’re not here, Shepard. You don’t get to ask those questions._  

Here or not, she was right. Garrus considered.

“Tell Sidonis and Vortash to meet us at the warehouses,” Garrus told Weaver. “They’ll miss the party, but they can keep our exit clear.” 

“Got it,” said Weaver. “Sending them your coordinates now. Melanis and Monteague have the new combat drones keyed to their omni-tools, by the way.”

“Good work, Weaver. We’ll need them. If the mercs move, we need to know.”

“You’ll know as soon as I do. Good hunting.”

Garrus turned to Monteague. “Let’s move.” 

***  

Seven to ten Eclipse turned out to be seven, and two of them were barely out of the novice stage. The fear of Archangel showed clear on their faces, beneath serene asari composure.  

From his position, hidden behind the half-open door. Garrus tracked heart rates, breathing, shield strength.  

“Drones, on my mark,” he murmured. At the corner of his vision, tucked behind the doorjamb, Melanis’s hand flew over her omni-tool. “ _Mark_.” 

The drones, blue-white and crackling cheerfully, flashed into the anteroom. The closest Eclipse vanguard shrieked and fired, the shot going wide to hit the wall.  

“Archangel! Goddess, Archangel’s here!” Her second shot hit the drone dead-center. It exploded in a concussive burst, knocking two Eclipse to the floor, sparks blistering the air as their shields overloaded and crashed the wearers’ nervous systems. The rest of the mercs reeled helplessly against the walls of the anteroom, trying to scramble behind crates. Two more were caught in Mierin’s Singularity and floated to the ceiling, limbs waving limply. 

Garrus rose from his crouch. One of the Eclipse engineers stood in the center of the room, assault rifle hanging uselessly at his side. One arm half-raised to ward him off.  

“Archangel,” gasped the man. “You --”  

Garrus didn’t give him time to finish. He crossed the room, switching out his Mantis for his Vindicator, and shot the merc in the stomach three times. Red drops misted the air between them as the merc fell, gurgling as blood filled his throat. 

Melanis’ Reave slammed into the mercs still snared by the Singularity, her barrier replenishing itself as the mercs wailed and spasmed. Monteague took out two mercs with headshots from his position at the door, slamming in a fresh clip and sighting behind him as soon as the mercs dropped. 

Only one left. She tried to crawl away on her elbows, her legs deadened. Garrus heard her swearing. She rolled over long enough to try and bring up her pistol, her shots pinging against his shields. 

At that range, he couldn’t miss. He made it quick; one shot to the head. Her helmet’s visor shattered, leaving her face bare and stricken in the blood-hot air, a ragged, ash-black hole where her right eye used to be.  

He swept the room with a gaze, hands tight. Clarity faded. 

_Top scores, Garrus_ , said Shepard’s dry voice. He willed it away.  

“We’re done here,” he said to the squad.  

*** 

Garrus kept his hands clenched around his rifle as he and Monteague split off from the others to make their way back to the base. When sick worry rose in his chest, he squeezed until his knuckles sang a protest, and the worry dropped away. 

_Three days -- two and a half, now._  

“Something is bothering you,” said Monteague. “You’ve usually got more to say after an op, boss. Even if it’s just yelling about sloppy form.” He cleared his throat. “Just saying.” 

“I’m ready for it to be over,” said Garrus evenly. “And I’m tired. But if it would make you feel better, Monteague, your form was sloppy.” 

The human threw back his head, laughing. “Well, I’m fucking reassured. Thanks.” He shifted his rifle and threw Garrus a look. “Better?”  

“Marginally,” Garrus replied. “I might make a soldier out of you if I had twenty years.”  

The banter formed in his mouth and left it without any effort. Somewhere, it seemed, he had a reserve of funny things to say, quips that fit just so into the patterns of squad conversations. 

_They deserve better than this, Garrus,_ said the dry, unimpressed voice. _Get your head back in it._

_You’re not here. You don’t get to give me advice._  

The voice was right. As always.  

“-- back to Earth, the old homestead, you know?” Monteague’s voice, with its slow sloping vowels, filtered through the comms. “Ripper’s never seen it. He was born on Elysium. He hasn’t even been to the Sol System. So we’ll go there first. He needs to meet my parents.”  

“Then what?” said Garrus. “He might be content to sit still, but not you.”  

“After all this? I’ve had enough running around for the rest of my life. We’ve got enough for a farm down in South America, if we’re careful. We’ll raise sheep and pigs and get drunk off our asses every night.” Monteague smacked his lips. The wet sound made Garrus cringe. “Pure heaven.” 

“Heaven,” echoed Garrus. A new ache -- old, really, but new to today -- rose in his chest. The squad’s plans were already laid out, waiting his word to release them. He swallowed and tightened his hands on his rifle.  

_Two and a half days._  

“Hope you’ve got property in mind, Monteague. You don’t have a lot of time to plan.”  

“Oh, I do,” said Monteague. “Ripper’ll fucking love it.” 

“I’m sure,” said Garrus. 

Well done, said the dry voice. He ignored it, and kept walking. His hands ached.

So passed the third day.

*** 

On the third night, Garrus fell asleep at his desk, waking with a strangled yell when his elbow tipped a pile of datapads to the floor.  

“Wh -- She --” He froze, biting his tongue. No one was there. The datapads clattered against each other. No other sound filled the room.  

_Why_ , he thought, _why did you go, why did you leave?_

The panic he’d held at bay shoved hard against the wall of his control, eager and hissing. He was too tired, too startled to resist. Sly coils darted through the notches in his spine, sharp as needles.  

“Shepard,” he groaned, half a sob. “Don’t do this. We’re almost done.” He covered his mouth with both hands, forcing the rest of the words down. He was Garrus Vakarian. He would not beg.  

The _please_ stayed trapped inside his mouth.  

_Two days. Two more days._

Garrus got up, back aching, and threw himself face-down on the bed. He rolled over a moment later as his carapace protested, and lay on his side, clenching his fists to the beat of his pulse. 

When he slept, he dreamed of the sea.


	21. Chapter 21

The fourth day began with his watch at the foot of the bridge. Only the air moved, stirred to a faint and clammy breeze by the giant, sluggish wall fans. It smelled sour and forgotten.

At 0600, Sensat slid through the front door and padded out. 

“Quiet night, boss?”

“Wh -- ah, yes.” Garrus shook his head. He had spent the past four hours counting the revolutions of the fans. His neck ached. “Time for the morning meeting?” 

Sensat nodded. “Sidonis wants to know if you want any of the haflet he’s making.” 

“For breakfast?” Clouded as he felt, Garrus winced at the idea of the over-spiced meat. “Is he trying to kill me?” 

“He said you’d say that. And he said to say ‘no more than usual.’ So, that’s a no?” 

“Yes, that’s definitely a no.” Garrus switched his rifle to the crook of his arm and stretched his fingers, wincing at his stinging knuckles. He nodded at the still-open door. “I’ll stick with ration bars and tea, if we have any of the dextro version left.” 

“Boxes upon boxes,” said Sensat. “Melanis already made yours.” 

Garrus’ voice strangled itself in his throat. “I’ll have to thank her,” he ground out, so grateful for the small affection he could barely speak. 

*** 

Weaver waited to start talking until Garrus sat down, the mug of tea steaming between his chilled hands, but just barely.

“We’ve got another one, boss, an asari ship this time.” She lifted her arm, omni-tool already glowing. “Want to hear it?”

“Just give me the condensed version,” he said around an aborted sip. His mug was cut for a human or asari mouth, and the tea threatened to spill down his chin. Melanis gave him a wide-eyed look, mouthing an apology he waved away. The hot liquid coursed over this tongue and burned a line down his throat. 

“Another bunch of do-gooders from Thessia, a bunch of priestesses from the Order of Bountiful Mercy or something --” 

“Plentiful Mercy,” said Mierin, around a mouthful of toast and jam. 

“Right. They tried to dock but took off in a hurry. Two of the priestesses went to the matron in charge, freaking out about an asari they had never seen before. Said she was in their rooms, just watching them. She disappeared as soon as they noticed her.”

“White eyes?” asked Garrus. His hands didn’t shake as he put his mug down on the table.

“White eyes.” Weaver glanced at her omni-tool. “And she was wearing green. That was the only other thing they mentioned, in between the sobbing and the freaking out.”

“Green’s the color of their order,” said Melanis. She leaned forward, chin balanced on her fist. “This is going to sound weird, but...” 

“We’re talking about people being on ships who shouldn’t be there,” said Erash. “I’d say ‘weird’ needs to be redefined.”

“Thank you for that, Erash,” said Garrus, as the squad broke up into nervous laughter. “Go on, Melanis.” 

The asari chewed the inside of her cheek. “Nevermind,” she said, after a pause. “It’s stupid.”

“No one’s going to laugh,” he told her, and the last chuckles faded away. Melanis’ lips twisted uncertainly, her eyes fixed just over Garrus’ shoulder, then she nodded.

“Humans have ghost stories --”

That was as far as Melanis got; Weaver snorted and folded her arms over her chest. Garrus sent her a glare, mandibles tight, and the girl flushed and looked at her feet.

“Melanis,” he said. 

“It’s stupid,” said Melanis, sending a glare of her own at Weaver. “I know it is, but it sounds like a ghost story to me. Maybe it’s just a hallucination. Goddess, it could be anything -- the only thing we’ve ruled out is drugs. The ships don’t have anything in common, and they’re coming from too far away to have been hit with the same chemicals. It’s totally random. And eerie,” she finished, voice soft.

“Amen to that,” said Butler.

“It’s not totally random.” Weaver had a musing look, eyes squinted at her omni-tool.

“Weaver?”

At the sound of Garrus’ voice, she looked up, and flushed again when she saw the entire squad looking at her. “They’re all old ships,” she said. “The turian ship, the _Chanteris_ , is two hundred years old, and the Order’s ship is twice that. Even the human ship predates Shanxi. And their crews have been together for a long time. Twenty years or more.”

“And that means what?” said Grundan. “Lots of old ships in the Terminus Systems, Weaver. Lots of tight crews.”

“It shows up a lot in ghost stories,” said Ripper. “The older a place is, the more ghosts it collects.” 

“Are we seriously considering this?” said Sensat. “Ghosts? I admire humanity’s boundless creativity, but this isn’t a vid. This is life, actual real life.” 

“We live in a universe where there are _sentient fucking jellyfish_ ,” snapped Monteague. “But life after death is too far out to consider?”

“Enough!” Garrus’s voice whipped through the building tension, harsher than he intended. _I’m taking this personally. Spirits, Shepard, where are you? What have we done?_

Panic hissed and chattered just underneath his control. He breathed deeply, smelling sweat, bread, and no small amount of fear. 

Shepard wasn’t there. 

“This conversation is over.” Sensat and Monteague opened their mouths, but Garrus slashed his hand through the air and they stayed silent, glaring at him. He didn’t care. Better that they were angry at him than each other. 

“Weaver,” he said, steel lacing his subvocals, “if you hear any more reports of -- _visitors_ \-- you bring them directly to me. No one else hears about it. Understood?”

“Understood, boss,” she said.

Garrus waited until she met his eyes before nodding. “Is there anything else to report?”

“Those vorcha we’ve been tracking have buddied up with a couple krogan loners, down by the environmental plant. Some of them are calling themselves the Boom Squad. Got a good bit of heavy weaponry -- nothing reliable, but there’s a lot of them.”

“Quantity over quality,” said Ripper. “Typical vorcha.” 

“Shock Squad, uproot them,” said Garrus. “I don’t want them getting settled down by those systems. Keep your distance; drones to start, then flush them out with incendiary charges.”

Weaver made a note on her omni-tool. “Got it. We can take care of it to -- what the hell?” Her omni-tool beeped three times, one section flashing a deep blood orange. “Uh, got something new,” she said. “Blue Suns are barricading their own troops in rooms down by the Gozu District.” 

“Skimming off protection money,” said Ripper, with a sage nod. Garrus didn’t see any reason to doubt him, but Weaver shook her head. 

“It’s not a punishment,” she said, brows puckering as she read her screen. “It’s about...protection?”

“Protection.” Garrus waited for Weaver to finish reading the transcript. 

“Yeah,” she said a moment later. “Protection. They’re saying the guys are sick and they don’t want it to spread.” 

“Brutal but efficient,” said Erash. “Minimize the chance of infection. Did they mention any symptoms?” 

“A cough, and a catastrophic fever. Then swollen joints, breathing difficulties...Jesus.” Weaver shuddered, typing so quickly her fingers were a blur. “It came on in a few minutes, though, that’s the weird thing. The first guys to get locked up were patrolling last night and by the time they got back to base, they were a mess.” 

Garrus’ hands clenched. “Where were they patrolling, Weaver?” 

“Uh, one sec.” She typed, then paused, lower lip caught in her teeth. “Down by the environmental plant,” she said.

“And how many are sick now?” asked Garrus, hands tightening.

“Fifteen,” she said immediately, still reading her omni-tool. “Not all Blue Suns, though. A couple batarians who run a bar down there are sick too. They got sealed in a back room. Fifteen people in seven hours.” Her skin paled under her freckles.

The squad was silent. 

“Well, fuck,” said Butler. 

Garrus allowed himself a moment of silence, weighing his options.

_The best way through, not the fastest._

He straightened in his chair. The squad mimicked his movement.

Weaver’s omni-tool beeped in the silence. “Twenty-one infected,” she said, after a glance. Garrus forced his hands to relax. A disease that could infect almost twenty people in a night deserved all of Archangel’s focus. 

“First priority is taking out the vorcha and krogan by the environmental plant,” he said. “All other ops are suspended until they’re gone. Sidonis, Grundan, you’re on home watch. I want everyone else prepped and ready to move by 0800.” He paused as an idea blossomed in his head. “This time, we’ll check the bodies when you’re done.”

“For samples of the disease,” murmured Erash.

“I think our friend Mordin will be interested,” Garrus said with a nod. “Don’t you?” 

*** 

“Pyros!” shrieked Weaver from her perch on the balcony. “Erash, Butler, on your nine!” Her combat drone sang over the roar of the flames, slicing between two of the vorcha pyros. One of the vorcha turned to blast the drone with a stream of white-yellow fire, but the drone shattered at the first touch of the flames. Both vorcha collapsed, faces pierced by sliver-thin shrapnel. 

Melanis snapped another vorcha’s neck with a single blow from a blue-haloed fist, but when she turned to slide behind cover, the stray flames from the second pyro’s tank snatched at her back. Garrus heard her howl from thirty yards away. 

“It’s always me!” she screamed over the comms. “First my stomach, now my back. Boss, I fucking quit!” 

“Stay down!” Erash bellowed. “I’m coming to you, Mel.”

“Mierin!” roared Garrus.

“On it! Keep your heads down! Warp deployed!” The dark spear surged ahead of Erash, clearing a path through the vorcha. The salarian slammed past and leapt into cover with Melanis. 

“Erash?” yelled Garrus, sighting down on a krogan gearing up to charge. “Erash, talk to me.” 

“She’s stable, but she’s out of the fight, boss.” 

“Keep her safe. Butler, krogan incoming!”

Butler’s only answer was a bellow as he charged, head down between his shoulders, legs pumping, but before he collided with the krogan, he pivoted on the ball of his foot and slammed into the krogan from the side, omni-blade gleaming as he buried it in the krogan’s neck. With a wrench of his arm, he slashed open the krogan’s throat, then drove his omni-blade up into the softer hide beneath the krogan’s jaw. Butler twisted his wrist, forcing the blade back into the soft tissue inside the krogan’s skull.

 _No way to regenerate from that_ , said Shepard, low and intense in Garrus’ head. Her voice, even in memory, made his neck flush. 

_Stop it, not now,_ he told her, without conviction. 

Butler tried to stand, but he slipped in the blood spilled around the krogan’s body and fell to his knees.

“Fuckin’ mess,” he growled, and heaved himself to his feet. 

Garrus saw a vorcha pyro whirl around a pillar and loose a stream of flame aimed at Butler’s retreating back. His flush faded from his neck, his voice froze in his throat. 

“Butler -- your six!”

Butler threw himself down a half-second too late. The hungry flames licked at his side from knee to shoulder, eating at Butler’s shields and then his armor.

“Fuck!” he bellowed, his SMG already chattering. The vorcha shrieked and collapsed, smothering the flames even as they burned it alive, but Butler fell to his knees, swearing. 

“Butler?” Garrus yelled. 

“I’m fine!” Butler answered. He stood a moment later, hissing. “Got through my goddamned armor, little shit-eater. I fuckin’ hate pyros.”

“Weaver, report!” 

“I'm reading two pyros and a rocket trooper on your left flank, but there’s a group approaching on the right and a krogan closing -- krogan charging, Sensat!”

The cool purity of the battle-spell swallowed the squad. Garrus felt it move through them, rage at two of their own being hurt transmuting into icy fury, and let himself relax. Anger used them; this fury was their tool.

Weaver yelled from the balcony, Mierin shouting at her to get down. Her Mantis clattered over the vorchas’ snarls, but Garrus heard when the gunfire switched to the hoarse cough of a Carnifex.

“Support!” shouted Mierin. “Anyone read me? We’ve got two pyros closing! We need support!”

“On it! Stay in cover! I'm using the boiler!” Garrus shouted, and swung over a low crate, racing for the stairs.

So many enemies. Garrus ran, rounds ricocheting off the floor just behind his feet, and took the stairs three to a stride. He dug into his ammo pouch, fist closing around the boiler.

“Incoming! Get down!” he shouted, and hit the trigger. The sphere arced out of his hand, a wicked silver glint in the smoky air, just in time for him to hear Weaver yell again.

“Mierin! Put your helmet back on!”

Garrus' gut knotted. His hand twitched, like it could snatch the boiler back before it struck home.

“It’s on fire, I can’t --” 

The sphere exploded, moisture flash-boiling, and twin booms followed as the pyros’ tanks ruptured. 

Flames surged toward the ceiling, Mierin shrieking behind them.

***

For the first time, the squad left a fight before it was finished. The vorcha and krogans’ roots were damaged, but not destroyed. 

Garrus didn’t care. Mierin and Melanis had to be carried back to the base, with Erash re-applying medi-gel to Mierin’s face and neck every fifteen minutes. Everyone walked close together, discovering new injuries, silent and watchful. Most of the golden wings had been burned away.

“This is a fuckin’ turn-up,” Butler sighed, leaning heavily on Garrus’ shoulder. No one said anything else.

The muscles under Garrus’ carapace ached. Compared to the rest of the squad, he’d gotten off with few injuries, but the guilt -- that was worse than the burns and pulled muscles.

 _You can’t plan on everything_ , said Shepard’s voice, gentle and sad. _You did the best with the information you had. And sometimes...sometimes the timing is bad._

_If I hadn’t --_

_Then Mierin and Weaver might be dead, instead of injured. You did the best you could._

_Where are you, Shepard?_

She didn’t answer, not even inside his head. 

***

Mierin woke up hours later, when her skin started to peel. 

“Oh Goddess,” she moaned, half-raising her hand to touch her face. Garrus caught her wrist and squeezed her hand. She rolled her head on the pillow and sighed, eyes focusing slowly. “Hey, boss.” 

“Hey, Mierin.”

“Is it bad?” She gestured at her face with her free hand. One eye was half-closed from swelling, but the worst of the raw purple at the center of the burns was gone. 

Garrus shook his head. “It’s not great, but you were lucky. Erash and Monteague say you need to rest for a day or two and then you’ll be good as new. Better, maybe.” 

“Better than I was? Hard to believe.” 

He laughed and squeezed her hand again. Mierin closed her eyes, and he thought she had fallen asleep. He laid her hand on her mattress and stood up, but she grabbed for his hand. 

“Boss, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have --”

“No,” he said, stern enough to make her wince. “We’re both at fault. Let’s call it even, and no more guilt. All right?” 

“All right,” she whispered, a tear slipping from the corner of one eye. “Can you send in Melanis, boss?” 

“Definitely.” He left, weary beyond telling, and nodded at Melanis. The asari hovered in the door, ready to dart toward her sister as soon as Garrus left. He bent his head to whisper to her.

“She’ll be fine, Mel.” 

“Of course she will be,” said Melanis. She held herself stiffly. The bandages covering her back poked out of the collar of her shirt. “We’re tough. Got it from Dad.” She slipped past him into the squad’s room. 

The rest of the squad rested in the common room, sharing blankets and packets of painkillers. 

“Melanis has the right idea,” said Butler. “I quit too.” 

“Me three,” said Ripper. Weaver poked her hand out of her cocoon of blankets and gave a weak thumb’s-up. 

“I’ll accept your resignations when you’re not all high on painkillers and medi-gel.” Garrus glanced at his chair, and decided against sitting down. Despite what he’d said to Melanis, guilt coursed through him in an uneasy river. Refusing himself small comforts seemed like an appropriate, if inadequate, punishment.

“Today was a prime example of two mistakes compounding each other,” he began.

Vortash groaned. “We don’t blame you, boss.”

 _You should_ , Garrus thought. _You should blame me, I nearly got Mierin killed._

“We know the rules,” said Weaver from inside her blankets. “Helmets at all times, warn ahead of time if you need to take off armor, always assume the worst when someone tells you to get down.” She turned on her side. “It sucked ass, but we’re alive.”

A slow murmur of agreement followed her words. Garrus wasn’t convinced, but he let them rest. Time for lectures later. 

*** 

Garrus’ guilt smelled like bitter smoke.

So passed the fourth day and night.

***

Garrus woke up slowly on the fifth day, his body begging him for a few more hours of rest. When he stretched, his shoulders creaked and ached from supporting Butler. A few burns dotted his hide, where his shields and armor hadn’t protected him completely, but their faint stings barely registered.

He rolled to his other side, eyes still closed, and reached out to pull Shepard into the curve of his arm. His fingers touched nothing but cool air and empty sheets.

“No,” Garrus whispered. “It’s been five days.” He opened his eyes to the dim, sterile outlines of his room.

“Shepard.” His voice carried no farther than the bed, weak and lost. “Shepard, where -- where are you?” He tried to shut his eyes against the memories crowding in his skull; her nimble fingers, her sly grins, the velvety skin under her ear.

How easy to believe he had imagined it all.

The waiting fissure shuddered and broke open. He moaned into his hands, curling around his grief in a bed gone cold and empty.

What if it had all been a dream?

 _No, no. Two years. I didn’t dream those. I’m not crazy. She was here._  

But how could he believe that, when even her voice in his head had gone silent? 

***

“Boss?” 

Garrus stared at Erash. He could barely focus on the salarian; his gaze kept wandering to the shadowy corners of the common room. 

“We’re running low on medi-gel,” said Erash. He twisted his hands and wouldn’t meet Garrus’ eyes.

Garrus blinked. The words took a long time to make sense, and fell flat against the ringing in his ears. “We’re _what_?”

Erash shifted miserably at Garrus’ tone. “We’re running low on medi-gel." 

“Are we out?”

“It’s a close thing, but we’re not at crisis yet. We’ve got enough for Mierin, Butler, and Melanis for tonight and tomorrow, and that’ll get them out of the worst of it. The rest of the squad can get by without it, but then we’ll be down to just two Kill Squads on active duty until they’re fully healed.”

“Right.” Garrus forced himself not to cover his eyes. “And we can’t exactly stop by the markets for more.” He sighed. _Shepard. Shepard, what do I do?_  

“Mordin’s clinic,” said Sidonis from the doorway. “Someone can make a quick trip, nice and quiet.” 

Garrus looked up. “Are you volunteering?” 

Sidonis shrugged. “I’m not injured or exhausted. Vortash isn’t, but he’s helping Weaver with the hacks. You can’t spare him, but you can spare me. Just makes sense.” 

It did. Garrus waited for Shepard’s voice, warning him against it. Her voice stayed silent.

The idea of sending a member of the squad out by themselves galled him, but Sidonis had one unassailable point: he was the only one who could be spared. Garrus’ nature and training told him he should be the one to go, but he felt the burn of fatigue in his muscles. If he went with Sidonis, he would only be a liability in a fight. 

He considered a long time. Erash and Sidonis waited for his decision.

“There and back,” Garrus said finally. “No delays, no engaging the enemy. You get the medi-gels, you come home. And,” he added, with particular emphasis, “we’re on lockdown until you get back. The only way you’ll get back in is through me.”

“Got it,” said Sidonis. He met Garrus’ eyes and nodded. “I’ll suit up.”

***

Garrus met Sidonis at the entrance to the tunnels. 

"Take the detour through the Kartu district,” he said. “It’s clear of all merc activity.”

Sidonis looked up from his shotgun. “It’s also two hours out of the way, boss.” He slammed a fresh clip into place. “Shouldn’t the priority be getting back as soon as possible?” 

“The priority is getting back,” Garrus bit out, “without attracting any attention. I’m not going to pretend I like sending you out alone, Sidonis, but if this is our best option, then you’re not taking any unnecessary risks.” 

Sidonis looked away, shoulders hunched. His posture matched his scent: sour worry, musky resistance. Garrus waited, unblinking, until Sidonis sighed. 

“Kartu district it is,” Sidonis slung his shotgun into its slot. “Don’t expect me back for about six hours, then.”

“We’re on full alert until you’re back. Come in over the bridge, not the tunnels. I’ll be waiting for you there.” Garrus laid his hand on Sidonis’ arm. The other turian stilled and looked up, mandibles flicking nervously. “I hope I don’t have to tell you to be careful. You’re risking the whole squad if you get caught. No heroics." 

Sidonis swallowed.

Shepard’s words crowded Garrus’ head, trying to force their way out. _They’re your squad. They’ll follow you into hell, and they’ll fight for you until they’re dead. But you have to take care of that loyalty. You have to be smarter._

“Don’t make me regret sending you out alone. We’re all getting out when this is done.” 

Except me, he thought, bitter and exhausted. Sidonis opened his mouth, no doubt scenting the cool edge of Garrus’ weariness, but Garrus cut him off with a step into Sidonis’ personal space. 

“If you risk the squad,” he said, a stone-calm rasp in his voice, “you’re not getting back in.”

Sidonis nodded. He smelled like nothing more than worry and eager anticipation. 

Garrus stepped back. “I’ll be waiting,” he told Sidonis. “At the bridge. Don’t forget.”

“Copy that.” Sidonis sealed his helmet in place. “See you in a few hours.” 

“Good hunting,” said Garrus. His hands ached, clenched into fists at his sides. He wished he had his rifle to focus on. “Be careful, Sidonis.” 

“You don’t need to worry about me, boss. Going silent.” Sidonis saluted, with a wry tilt of his head. The last flecks of gold paint on his armor caught the light as he turned and walked into the dim tunnel.

***

Garrus walked back into the common room to find the squad watching him, pale and weary. Mierin had made her way down the stairs with Melanis’ help, and sat cocooned in blankets between her sister and Vortash. She reached up to scratch at the peeling skin on her neck, but Vortash grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand down, pinning it between both of his own.

“I know you’re all tired,” Garrus said, “but we’re on full alert until he’s back. Vortash, are the tunnels sealed?” 

“Sealed and keyed to your omni-tool, boss. No one will get through unless it’s with your code or military-grade explosives.”

“Not to mention the charges in the tunnels,” said Weaver. “And those are keyed to _my_ omni-tool. Anyone not broadcasting their squad ID gets blown to shit as soon as I hit the button.”

“Good,” Garrus nodded. “I’ll take the watch at the bridge. Sidonis knows the approach, so if anyone comes down the tunnels, hit the trigger. No hesitation. 

“Then we run,” said Grundan. 

Garrus shook his head. “If we blow the charges, we evacuate down the secondary tunnels through the practice range. It won’t come to that. But,” he said, letting his hunter’s smile spread his mandibles wide, “no harm in being prepared. You all know the drill.”

“I know an order to suit up when I hear it,” sighed Sensat. “Just when I was getting comfortable, too.”

***

Garrus held his position at the foot of the bridge, the base silent and watchful behind him. Six hours had gone by, without word or sign from Sidonis. 

Sidonis stepped out of the darkness.

“Boss?” He shifted, the light flowing over his visor. “Boss, I need --” 

Garrus raised his rifle and sighted. “Hold,” he gritted through his teeth over the open comms. Sidonis froze, hands held high. “Helmet off, Sidonis.”

Sidonis obeyed without pause. Garrus relaxed as the familiar markings appeared, but kept his rifle raised. Sidonis was back, but empty-handed. 

“The medi-gels?” 

“Never made it to the clinic,” said Sidonis. “Boss, it’s bad out there.” 

If Sidonis smelled of fear or deceit, Garrus’ suit filtered away the traces. He paused, then lowered his rifle and unsealed his helmet. His first breath brought nothing but musty air and the smell of rotting food, and the second only brought more of the same. 

“Approach.” He beckoned with his free hand, and Sidonis took his first step onto the bridge. Garrus called up the palm menu of his omni-tool and waited, ready to key the charges. 

Sidonis stopped ten feet away and brought his hands back up to carapace-level. Garrus breathed in again, and caught nothing. He relaxed and closed the palm menu. 

“Talk to me.” 

“Jaroth, Garm, Tarak -- they’re all working together.” Sidonis’ mandibles drew in, quivering. “They’re meeting now, down by the docks off the Kartu district.” 

“Weaver didn’t get anything on the hacks,” said Garrus, suspicion rising as his hands tightened on his rifle barrel, joints creaking. 

“Boss, they’re not using the comm channels, they’re using damn _couriers_.” Sidonis’ voice frayed, the subvocals roughened by what Garrus knew was gathering panic. “They write the messages on datapads not hooked up to the extranet and --” 

“Couriers,” Garrus said hoarsely. Such a simple solution, so elegant the squad had missed it all together. “Damn.” 

“I can get us there,” said Sidonis, in his broken, reedy voice. “We can break them, boss, but we’ve got to run.” He shifted from foot to foot, eyes hungry. “We have to go, now.”

“Hold on,” said Garrus. His heart strained at his ribs. I can end it, break the backs of the mercs -- “We need the others. A squad will have better luck than just us.” 

“No -- it’s too tight, a squad’ll just get noticed.” Sidonis took another step forward. “It’s got to be us, boss. Smash and dash, just like they teach us in basic.” 

“I remember,” said Garrus absently, watching Sidonis. “Why so eager, Sidonis?” He waited for the tells -- the shifting eyes, the nervous hands -- the things he’d learned in C-Sec, not basic, and what Sidonis couldn’t know.

What a surprise, to learn that turians tried to cover their lies the same way humans did.

Sidonis’ eyes never left Garrus’ face, and his hands were steady. He shifted from one foot to the other, eager to start the hunt.

Garrus waited for doubt, for Shepard’s voice. 

Silence. 

He flicked his comms to the base channel. “Butler?” 

“I’m here.” 

“I need you at the bridge. Sidonis is back with some...interesting news. I’m going to check it out.”

“Boss?” 

“You heard me, Butler. You’re on watch.” Garrus paused.

_You have to be smarter._

“Two hours, Butler. If you don’t hear from me before then, assume --” Garrus fought to keep his voice steady against his rising exhilaration, and the finality of what he was about to say. “Assume the worst-case scenario.”

A thoughtful pause came from Butler’s end of the comms. “Aye, boss,” he said. 

 _You were the start of the squad,_ thought Garrus. _You know them as well as I do, and you’re a part of them in a way I can’t be. That’s why I’m asking you to watch them while I can’t. While I end this._

“Garrus,” hissed Sidonis. “We have to go, now.” He turned, heading back into the gloom at the far end of the tunnel, glancing over his shoulder. 

The door to the base slid open. Butler leaned against the doorframe, yawning. His easy slouch was that of a man well-healed and well-rested. The medi-gel and mods had done their work well. Butler’s eyes gleamed, alert above the sleepy set of his mouth. He didn’t question Garrus. He was a good soldier: Archangel’s strong arm. 

“Two hours,” Garrus said, and Butler nodded. The human understood.

“Aye, boss,” he said, around another yawn. He glanced behind Garrus. “Sidonis already took off. Tosser.” 

Garrus huffed a laugh. When he turned his head, only the faint outline of Sidonis’ armor stood out against the gloom. Time to run. 

“Good hunting,” said Butler. “Can’t wait to hear about what’s so interesting.” 

“Thanks,” said Garrus, sealing his helmet back in place. He could barely see the last fugitive gleam of the gold paint on Sidonis’ back. “I’ll tell you all about it when I get home.” _With the three biggest trophies of all to add to our count,_ he thought. 

Butler saluted, hefting his SMG into the crook of his elbow.

***

Garrus caught up to Sidonis quickly, then fell back a few steps to let the other turian lead the way. Neither of them spoke. 

The run reminded Garrus of his first run through Omega, Shepard at his side. He felt the same clarity, the purity of mind brought on by burning leg muscles and lungs clawing for stale air. Every corner they turned promised to have her hiding just around the bend, smiling her secret smile, and every corner disappointed him. 

_Focus, Vakarian. This could all end today._

Then what? Shepard would still be gone. 

He bit his tongue, the spark of pain chasing away the thought. 

_Focus, dammit. Get a plan together._  

“How much further, Sidonis?” he panted. 

“There’s a spot about forty meters ahead for you to set up. Good vantage point. You’ll be able to pick them off, and I’ll take care of any bodyguards. It’ll take longer for me to get into position than it will to kill these bastards.” Sidonis’ voice broke into rough peaks and valleys as they ran, laced with hate. 

“Good,” said Garrus. The battle-spell filled him, and he welcomed it grimly. All thoughts of the squad, the future, even Shepard, fell away, left on the ground behind him as he ran. He would scoop them back up on the way home, and carry them with him away from Omega.

“There,” hissed Sidonis, voice low. He slowed and pointed to a pile of crates set against the catwalk rail. “You’ll be able to see all three of them from here.”

Garrus lowered himself into a crouch and knee-walked into position. Garm’s red crest glowed in the far-off light, twenty feet below him, with Jaroth’s thin form at Garm’s side. The faint silhouette of Tarak’s bulky armor stood off to the right, arms crossed on his chest. 

“Incendiary rounds should keep them down while we finish them off,” he whispered. “I don’t even need to use my scope. Why do you think they’re making it so easy?” 

Sidonis laughed behind him, rough and spiraling. “They didn’t think we’d ever find out about their little plan,” said Sidonis. “They’re dead wrong. Know which one you want to start with?”

“Garm,” said Garrus without hesitating. He nodded to a half-shadowed corner on the other side of the catwalk. “Set up there. If Jaroth or Tarak try to run, take them down.”

Sidonis gave his spiraling laugh again. “Figured you’d want Garm.” 

“Get into position,” said Garrus, eye already focused through his scope. The HUD ticked sweetly as it measured Garm’s heartbeat. “One minute, then I give the signal.” Garm’s back was to him. A few degrees’ turn to either side, and Garrus could take out the krogan’s shields with one shot. He counted to thirty, then thirty again. Sidonis wasn’t in sight. 

“Sidonis, are you in position?” 

His comms rattled with static, but no answer from Sidonis. 

“Dammit, Sidonis, this is no time to fool --”

“Boss?” 

Garrus’ hand twitched, a scant millimeter from squeezing the trigger. “Weaver,” he hissed. “I’m in cover. This had better be good.”

“Boss, the charges in the base just went dead.” 

Ice slipped down his spine. “What?” 

“All of them, it’s like someone flipped a switch.” Weaver’s voice shivered. “That son of a bitch -- I’m locked out of the system!”

“Weaver, breathe,” he said, as gently as he could as his tongue went numb. “Tell me what’s happening.”

“It was _his ID_ , boss!” Weaver’s voice cracked in desperate fury. “Fucking Sidonis! He shut down the charges!”

Garrus raised a head gone heavy and dull, looking for what he knew he wouldn’t be able to find. Sidonis was gone. 

“Get out,” he said. “All of you, just run.”

The last words faded to a whisper. Garm finally turned, presenting the broad side of his crest to Garrus. Even in the dim light, Garrus could see it wasn’t Garm at all, and the salarian next to him wasn’t Jaroth either.

His mouth went dry and sour. The ice closed over his head. 

_Sidonis._  

Rage, pure and seething, flamed in his heart and went out, buried under the heavy waves of terror already crashing into him. He had blundered into the trap without question, and now -- 

“Weaver --” he choked out. _Shepard was right, she can’t help them_.

“Boss? I can’t --”

A rattle of gunfire sounded on the other end of the comms. Butler shouted, indistinct, and a grenade exploded close enough to the comms to send a blister of static into Garrus’ headset. 

Weaver screamed Garrus’ name, and the comms went dead.

***

Garrus ran.

Through alleys and tunnels, through water and choking clouds of steam, through lightless corridors and white rooms. 

He ran in silence. 

So began the sixth day. 

*** 

Garrus stopped running at the end of the bridge. He slid his rifle into its slot on his back. It hung in place, heavy and useless. 

Useless. 

His hands didn’t shake as he unsealed his helmet and lifted it away. He held his breath as long as he could, until his lungs burned. Clenching his jaw helped a little, but in the end his mouth opened on its own and he sucked in a breath, gagging at the smell. Spent thermal clips and sweat, the acrid spray of fear -- and blood. 

He stumbled forward a step and then another. A chill began at his feet and worked its way upward, turning his muscles and bones to bitter ice. He kept walking. 

The mercs had carried away their dead. Blue and red blood stained the bridge; the tang of unfamiliar sweat hung in the air, blunted by the smoke left by the proximity charges.

Some of them had been active when the mercs hit. 

 _Maybe, maybe they ran when the charges blew_. Garrus saw the squad running through the secondary tunnels, blowing the internal charges behind them. _Too close,_ they’d say, and laugh.

His heart opened to the hope with such purity that he heard their laughter and the sound of their footsteps, carrying them away to safety. For one blameless, perfect moment, Garrus believed.

 The sound of the front door undid him. He jerked his head toward the noise. A dark shape slumped across the threshold, blocking the door as it tried to slide shut. 

No one had made it out. They wouldn’t have left anyone behind. 

The light in the hallway flickered senselessly. Garrus watched it, counting the beats between light and dark, as his eyes went dry and started to ache. 

He kept walking until he reached the door, and knelt beside the body. Butler lay on his side, one hand wrapped around the barrel of his SMG. Burns covered the fingers and palm, from where Butler had gripped the gun as a thermal clip -- the last -- overheated and spat itself out. His face had been burned away. 

Garrus touched Butler’s arm, mouthing his name. He pushed himself to his feet, leaning on the wall for support, and crossed into the base. 

The silence wrapped around him. He reached up and pulled his visor away. 

 _Don’t need it_ , he thought numbly, and took another unsteady step. 

Sensat’s body spilled against the wall a few feet behind Butler. A shotgun blast had blown his chest open. His eyes stared wide and unblinking over Garrus’ shoulder. Knees trembling, Garrus knelt and closed Sensat’s eyes, and said his name. After a moment, he stood again, and kept walking. 

Monteague and Ripper were in the kitchen. Ripper’s shield still whined and sparked where he lay face-down, a single shot to the back of his neck. Garrus covered his mouth. Monteague had taken a shot, maybe more than one, to the thigh, and been left to bleed out. He had dragged himself across the kitchen floor before he died, his hand a few inches from Ripper’s head. 

Garrus forced himself to say their names. The words tried to stick in his throat. When he scraped them out, they rang flatly against the low ringing in his ears. 

He faced the common room, and staggered against the counter. The world tilted, the colors turned wrong and red. Nothing smelled right, and everything was silent -- not the silence of sleep or watchful hours, but the unending absence of sound. 

Garrus stood. His throat ached, and his hands clenched over and over, his talons pricking through his gloves and digging into his palms. 

 _No time to run,_ said the distant, clinical part of his mind. _So they gathered together as best they could, and tried to defend themselves._

_I should have been here. I should be dead._

He made a noise, high and broken, and tried to cover his eyes. The room stayed exactly where it was, in perfect, lifeless clarity. 

 _I should have been here._ He opened his hands to the room. _I should have been here. This is my fault._  He started to shake, and couldn’t stop. 

“Boss.” The voice wavered, so weak he almost missed it. He swung his head around slowly, tracking the sound without any hope, but across the room, near the stairs, a body shifted.

“Vortash.” 

The batarian sat with his back against the wall, all four eyes misted and blind. His arms twined around a body in violet armor, marred by dark splashes of blood. 

Mierin. 

Garrus sank to his knees next to Vortash, dizzy and sick. “I’m here,” he said, his gut wrenched by how small, how useless the words sounded against Vortash’s weak breathing. “I’m here,” he said again. 

“She tried to stop them,” Vortash wheezed. “Bastards. Took Grundan’s eyes. She tried. Tried to stop.” He blinked, and his head dropped like all the muscles in his neck had been cut. “Too many.” His arms tightened around Mierin’s body. “Good girl.” He coughed, wet and clotted with more than blood. “Bas...”

“Vortash, hold on --” Garrus grabbed Vortash’s shoulders and squeezed, willing his eyes to clear, for him to keep breathing. “I’m here, just...hold on. I’ll get -- I’ll get med...” He whispered the last words, his gaze falling on the hole in Vortash’s side, as big as his doubled fists. 

“Bastards,” said Vortash. He inhaled, a deep greedy breath, and choked. His chest rose, held, and fell slowly, the breath leaving him in a rattle. 

Garrus stayed still for a long time, his hands on Vortash’s shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he said, and cringed away from his own voice. 

_I can say it now, when there’s no one left to hear me. What good does it do them? Look. Look!_

 He looked.

The common room had been turned into a war zone. The blankets on the couches, thrown aside when the attack started, were soaked and stiff with blood half-dried. Someone’s body sprawled across the back of one of the couches, torn apart by claws and teeth. The varren had been at him. Erash. 

With a sound like the rasp of sand, the breath left Garrus’ lungs. Erash’s name lodged in his mouth and stayed there. His voice was gone, and for the best. What was there to say? He mouthed the name instead, and stood up. 

The squad had stayed together, as long as they could, fighting back to back in a tight knot. The mercs broke them, and the squad scattered. 

 _To die alone,_ said the clinical voice from its safe distance. Garrus ignored it and made himself keep walking.

The mercs had held Grundan down while they took his eyes and cut his throat. Garrus stumbled to his body, mouthing his name, the syllables unfamiliar shapes on his tongue. And Melanis, her hands broken, her jaw crushed, she had suffocated as blood filled her lungs. 

No words existed. No body, no mind, no soul, could hold so much grief and stay standing. Garrus kept walking. 

Someone moaned, the sound small and muffled, quiet enough to be hidden by his own breathing.   

Garrus half-knelt, half-fell, clumsy in his armor, and crawled toward the workbench. Weaver’s stool lay toppled on its side, a bloody handprint smeared across the leather seat, like someone had braced against it as they crawled underneath the workbench.

 _She tried to hide. They shot her, and she tried to hide._ He shivered, every movement fevered agony. _Oh, Spirits, anything but this._  

“Weaver.” It was all he could say, as the most monstrous grief of all rose wailing in his head. 

Weaver turned her head toward his voice. Her eyes slowly focused on his. “Boss,” she whimpered, and started to cry. 

Garrus reached out and touched her chin. He found his voice, stuck in his throat, and tried to talk. “It’s okay, you’re okay, it’s fine, I’m here.” 

All a lie, except the last two words, and they were no use at all. 

Weaver tried to shift, and screamed through her teeth. Her hand slipped off her chest, sticky with blood. “Oh God,” she gasped, and pressed her hand back to her chest. A wet broken cough bubbled out of her mouth. “Oh my God.” 

Garrus shoved himself under the desk, clamping his hand over hers. “You’re okay,” he said again, eyes stinging. 

“Fucking Sidonis,” she hissed through bloody teeth. “Messed with my stuff, boss. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“No,” Garrus begged, cutting her off. He slid an arm under her and pulled her body against his chest. She felt heavier than he expected, all slack muscles in his arms. He knew he was hurting her, but she relaxed against him, pushing as close as she could.

 _Anything but this. Let me save one of them_ , he pleaded. _Just one._ He scrabbled with his free hand for the pouch at his waist, praying for a medi-gel packet, for a scrap of plastic film, anything, but his hand came back empty. Weaver gasped for breath. Her ribcage felt fragile as an egg under his hand, the bones warped out of shape. 

_Concussive round to the chest at close range, without shields,_ thought the merciless, fascinated part of him _. Sucking wound. Not long now._ The voice dragged him away, to safety, far from the cold room that reeked of blood and the dying human girl in his arms. 

_Shut up, shut up,_ Garrus screamed at himself, shoving himself up against the wall of his grie _f. I did this, I brought them to this._

“I’m sorry,” Weaver panted. “I’m so sorry, I tried but it hurts...” She grabbed his wrist and held on with fading strength. 

“Don’t you dare. It’s not your fault.” Garrus stood at the center of a hopelessness so great it was peaceful -- the eye of the storm, surrounded by nothing but ruin. “You all -- you all --” He couldn’t finish, and pulled Weaver closer to him. She was freezing; he felt her chill skin through his gloves. 

“They were so good,” she whispered. Her eyes brightened. “All of them. They were so good.” 

“It’s okay,” said Garrus. “Don’t -- don’t try to talk, just rest, I’ll get medi-gel --” 

Weaver laughed, sounding so weary and old that Garrus closed his eyes. “It’s okay,” she echoed, and tugged on his wrist. He bent his head. 

“Anna.”

“Anna,” Garrus said. A wild, barren ache rose in him. “Anna Weaver.” 

She nodded. Her name burned in Garrus’ throat.

“You should go, boss.” Weaver moaned and pressed down on her chest. Her blood had soaked through his glove, and she shivered, lips blue. “They’ll be back. Bastards,” she added, voice breaking. “But we’re good.” 

“Always. The best.” 

Her mouth trembled as she smiled. “Yeah,” she said. Her eyes slid past him, pupils dilating. “Pretty.”

Garrus leaned into her gaze, willing her to focus on him. “Wea -- Anna, just stay with me. It’s going to be okay. I promise you, it’s going to be okay.” 

Weaver didn’t hear him. No one did.

***

Garrus lowered Weaver -- _Anna, her name is Anna_ \-- to the floor. When he stood up, she looked very small, and unspeakably young, and very far away. 

_She might be sleeping_ , he told himself, without trying to believe it. Her eyes were closed, but her hands -- and his -- were bloody. 

He stared at her for a long time, willing himself to scream. He waited to go mad. He willed his heart to stop.

His mouth stayed shut, his mind moved in ordered lines, and his traitor heart kept beating. 

And beating.

***

He carried them into the common room, one by one, and covered them with the blankets. Ten bodies. 

_Weaver-no-Anna-Melanis-Grundan-Erash-Mierin-Vortash-Monteague-Ripper-Sensat-Butler._ The litany tumbled through his head, unending. 

He pulled his rifle from its slot on his back.

Garrus stared down at the squad, fists clenched around his rifle, and thought, _There should be twelve. Eleven will have to do._

***

“Garrus?” Thrace’s voice warmed with affection. Garrus winced. “Garrus, how are you?”

“I’ve been better,” he said, and bit his tongue to keep from laughing.

Thrace paused. “Where are you, son?”

“I’m wrapping up one last job. Just wanted to say --” He paused, shivering. He couldn’t seem to get warm. “Just wanted to say thanks, for your help.”

Thrace stayed silent. “This job,” he said finally. “Tough one?” 

“The toughest.” Garrus breathed in deeply. “Do you think we see them when we die?”

His father didn’t need to ask what Garrus meant. “Yes,” he said. “I do. I think they lead us onward.” Another silence stretched between them, until Thrace broke it. “What do you see, son?”

Garrus closed his eyes. “Nothing. My mistakes. Nothing.” 

“Then you’re not done yet, Garrus.” Thrace cleared his throat. “There’s a lot you don’t know, because I couldn’t tell you. When you’re done -- when your job is done, you come home. I don’t care what you see when you’re done. You come home.”

“Yeah, I will.” Garrus fitted his visor back into place with his free hand. “I’ll do that, Dad.”

“Don’t look for what might not come,” said Thrace. “Remember what I said. Finish the job, and I’ll see you soon.” 

“See you soon,” said Garrus. He ended the call before Thrace could say more.

***

“You were right, Shepard,” he murmured. “The balcony has a great view.”

He heard the mercs coming long before he saw them. The roar of the Blood Pack, the heavy quick-march of the Blue Suns, and Eclipse’s musical whirring mechs. They were coming for him. He checked his thermal clips one last time. Enough to get the job done.

He picked up his helmet and slid it over his head. 

The noises got louder. He could see movement at the end of the bridge, beyond the barricade.

Archangel stood up and sighted his first target.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So ends part one of _Ghost_. An eight-thousand word chapter is a lot to lay on you guys at once, but this was the final push -- it didn't feel right to break it up. 
> 
> Next week starts part two. And oh, the places we'll go.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> _Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind_  
>  Cannot bear very much reality. 
> 
>  
> 
> T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton", _The Four Quartets_  
> 

Shepard woke with pain’s teeth sunk deep in her muscles. Nothing new there. What _was_ new was the woman’s voice, yelling from somewhere above Shepard’s head. 

“Wake up, Commander!”

 _Don’t want to,_ Shepard thought, in a head filled with muzzy, smoke-like images. _It’s warm here. Don’t want to be cold any--_

“Shepard, do you hear me? Get out of that bed now! This facility is under attack.” 

An explosion deep beneath her rocked the room. Her head cleared and she blinked her eyes open to white tile and the smell of antiseptic.

“What --” she whispered, and grit her teeth against the pain in her jaw. The left side of her face sang with what felt like a dozen wasp stings. She touched her chin, and hissed through her teeth when her skin tore away.

_What the actual hell?_

“Shepard, your scars aren’t healed but I need you to get moving. This facility’s under attack!”

 _That voice_. _I know that voice, but --_ A black hole peeled itself open, hungry and endless, dead-center in her skull. She shied away from it, cringing.

Another explosion shuddered up through the bed, and brought the smell of heavy smoke and fire with it. She twisted upright, and a bright starburst of pain blossomed in her side. 

Pain and fire.

The memory slammed into her and blotted out the room.

_Joker calls her name as she seals the escape pod door, arcs of fire dancing an arm’s-length away. And above her, nothing but airless, lifeless space and the ruined body of her ship._

“Oh my God,” Shepard gasped, as her lungs tightened and her heart clenched. “I _can’t breathe --_ ”

She scrabbled at the back of her neck, fighting to steal back just a few more seconds of oxygen, but she couldn’t grab the tube, she couldn’t breathe, and she could smell her own body burning --

Her hands met the cool circle of her amp, and the bright tart taste of her biotics filled her mouth.

Shepard blinked. The room solidified around her. She was in a medbay, the outlines of its beds hazy through growing smoke. Fire licked at the windows, and somewhere, not too far away, someone screamed. The back of her neck smarted. When she looked down at her fingertips, a thin film of blood gleamed in the light.

“There’s a pistol in a locker on the other side of the room. Hurry!”  

 _Not healed, my ass_ , she thought, clarity punching its way through her mental fog. She swung down off the bed, muscles burning as they stretched. Her feet cramped as she tried to balance her weight.   _I’m still a work in progress._  

The black hole yawned wider, beckoning. Shepard set her back to it, turned her eyes away. 

_There’s a pistol in the locker_ , she thought. _Whatever else, I’ve got my amp and I’ve got a gun. Everything else can wait._

_Now. Let’s find a thermal clip._

***

The hole in her memory turned out to be the least of her worries. 

_Cerberus._

Shepard half-listened as she tried not to stare at their uniforms. Kahoku’s exhausted face peered at her, fury warring with resignation as he thanked her for tracking down his men. 

_Meat and tubes._  

Her jaw ached. She didn’t touch it. The body wrapped around her didn’t feel like home; it felt treacherous, like a badly-crafted knife that would turn in her hand and cut her. 

_Two years._

_Two years and twelve days._

She couldn’t help it; she jolted, heart-sick. 

“I’ve been gone that long?” The words fell into the air separating her from Jacob and Miranda. Jacob made a move to put a hand on her arm and thought better of it, pulling away at the last minute.

 _Yeah, no touching,_ Shepard thought acidly. _Don’t want to damage the investment any more than necessary._ She shifted away, curled around a dry, hollow misery.

_Two years._

She stared out the window. Miranda cleared her throat delicately and pulled up her omni-tool display. 

“We have just a few questions, Commander, to assess your state of mind --”

“Maybe you should have left me there,” Shepard interrupted, still facing the window. “On Alchera.”

Miranda stared at Shepard placidly, unsurprised by Shepard’s interruption. “I assure you, Commander, that you are much better off with us.” She cleared her throat again and tapped in a long string of numbers.

 _What makes you so sure?_ thought Shepard. The hole in her head chattered and hissed. _What makes you so goddamn sure I wasn’t better where I was?_

*** 

_I suppose I should feel awed, or at least impressed._ Shepard considered the projection in front of her, as the neatly-clad grey figure shifted under her gaze. _He is, after all_ , _the architect of my return_. She couldn’t summon more than a weary patience.  

“How are you feeling?” the Illusive Man asked. He hadn’t so much as glanced Shepard’s way since his image appeared in the briefing room.

Shepard folded her arms and waited to learn what she could from his silences. 

He chuffed out smoke and leaned back in his chair. “Standard interrogation technique. Present someone with silence, and they’ll try to fill it. You don’t need to use your N7 training on me to prove its worth, Shepard. I’m well-aware of your capabilities.” 

Shepard lifted her eyebrow a bare millimeter. _Yet here you are, filling the silence anyways. And this is kindergarten compared to N7 training._  

“What’s the mission?” she asked. Gritting her teeth hurt, but not as much as clenching her fists. She did both. 

The Illusive Man blew out another cloud of smoke, something like a smile teasing the corners of his mouth.

“What do you know about the Collectors?” he asked. His posture gave little away, his eyes even less, and yet, something in him realigned as he spoke. 

_I know enough to not trust the way you look when you say their name,_ she thought, sour dread filling her throat. _You look_ hungry. 

The Illusive Man kept talking, about the Collectors, about Freedom’s Progress, about human interests, as Shepard worried a bloody hole in the inside of her lip and thought about devil’s bargains. 

*** 

Two mechs closed on her position, buzzing politely about hostile forces. The shattered remains of the FENRIS mechs littered the ground between Shepard and where Jacob and Miranda crouched in cover. Her aim hadn’t suffered, that much was clear, but her biotics were still untested. On the Lazarus Base, she’d been too keyed up to trust her control, and relied on her eyes and pistol instead. 

 _Now or never,_ she thought, as the LOKIs came down the stairs. She reached for the cool blue wave that danced constantly in the base of her skull, and gripped it tight. Her mouth filled with saliva, her eyes pricked, and she drew the wave in a line down her arm. Singularity was safe, Singularity was a good place to start --

She _shoved_ the wave down through her fingers, and felt herself ripped through the air, a corridor opening ahead of her as she rushed toward the mechs.

When she crashed back into the world again, air boomed around her and the mechs slammed backward, their chests and limbs crushed to slivers.

A shudder began in her feet and worked its slow, greasy way up into her spine. Her stomach cramped and twisted on itself. Shepard turned slowly, fighting the urge to retch.

 _This is new_ , said a bemused but fascinated voice in the back of her head. _New, but appropriate._

“What the hell did you do to my amp?” she shouted to Miranda, who stood thirty feet away, hand on her hip. “That was supposed to be a Singularity.”

“That was -- unexpected, Commander,” said Miranda, somehow contriving to make it sound like Shepard had converted into a vanguard out of spite. 

“ _Unexpected?”_

“There were bound to be side effects,” said Miranda, infuriatingly reasonable. “I’m sure you can adapt, Commander.” She cocked her head as she holstered her SMG. “Be more open-minded. You have a whole new perspective now.” 

Shepard considered and discarded seven different replies, each more cutting than the last, and bit the inside of her cheek to keep anything she’d regret later from escaping. There was no way to tell how long she needed to cooperate with Cerberus; best to refrain from antagonizing Miranda too early. 

Besides, the Charge felt _good_ , like the first peak of a runner’s high, or the first swallow of cold beer on a hot day. Like flying. Or like a kiss, unlooked for but sweet as autumn. 

_This is going to take some readjustment,_ Shepard thought. Her amp crackled at the base of her skull, pent-up energy shoving at her control. The hole in her head was quiet. With the adrenalin still being pumped into her bloodstream, she felt light as dead leaves.

“Watch out,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m experimenting.” She waited until the count of five to give Jacob and Miranda time to get into cover, and gave the blue wave a mental twist, feeding its pulse down her arm. 

Her fingers spasmed at the last minute and the explosions cascaded off to her right. The air filled with a sweet-sharp burning smell, like melting caramel edged with hot metal. The last, weakest explosion was still enough to blow apart a crate before it stopped.

The nerves in her arm jangled with residual energy. She banished the jitters with a mental shake, and clenched her fist, testing the strength of her fingers. 

 _Impressive,_ said the bemused voice. _A little practice is all you need._  

She shivered. “Let’s keep moving,” she yelled to Jacob and Miranda. “We’ve got lots of ground to cover.”

***

As long as she couldn't feel her body, or at least wasn't aware of its aches, she could forget she wasn't herself. Not really, not anymore. Shepard Charged, weightless as dead leaves, fading in and out of the chill air. 

She turned as the corridor collapsed behind her, pistol-whipping a LOKI and crushing its head with her boot. The turn moved her behind a crate, safe in cover, where she let out a long rush of a laugh. 

_Maybe it’ll be okay,_ she thought, sucking in a lungful of chill air. _I can do this. I can do this._

Jacob swung around the crate and crouched next to her, checking his clips. When he glanced up, he offered her a small, tentative smile.

“It’s good to hear you laugh, Commander,” he said, sincere on the surface, and maybe all the way down. 

 _Always the peacemaker,_ Shepard thought, filing the information away. “Shooting things makes me feel better,” she said, popping out of cover to snap off a Shockwave as two FENRIS mechs approached. Her hand stayed steady as the explosions snapped the legs off the mechs. She finished them with a shot to each red eye. “Especially after talking to your Illusive Man,” she added, the memory shaking loose her grin. 

Miranda let loose a sigh, already long-suffering, from across the wreckage. “He’s invested a great deal in your well-being, Commander. You should really be --” 

“-- more open-minded?” Shepard pressed, her smile sharpening. A nervous stray thought warned her to tread lightly, but she ignored it. 

Miranda sent her an impatient look, one that clearly said _Step back, dangerous ground_ , but the woman gave no other indication she had heard Shepard at all. 

Shepard waited until the last whine of the mechs faded away, then eased up, scanning the perimeter slowly. She felt a low, reluctant gratitude that Jacob and Miranda stayed in cover until she nodded at them. 

_At least I won’t have to worry about getting shot in the back,_ she thought with a wry inward grin. _It might not be all bad, being such a huge_ investment.

Her grin stayed in place, hidden, until Miranda bypassed a lock on one of the prefabs and a handful of quarians looked up at them in shock, guns already in hand.

 _Well, I think it’s shock._ Shepard held up a hand to Jacob and Miranda, shaking her head as they tried to unholster their guns. _Can’t really tell, can I?_  

A violet-tinged shadow shoved its way through the quarians, its voice a sweet familiar crackle. 

“Put your guns down, Prazza -- _Shepard?”_

Shepard’s grin floundered and disappeared, only to reappear on her face and stretch her new skin to splitting. “Tali?” 

Tali took a step back, away from Shepard.  

The hole in Shepard’s head rattled and cooed.

***

So passed the first four days of Shepard’s new life. 

*** 

The second conversation with the Illusive Man was no easier to stomach than the first. Her head ached and her legs had begun to protest being stuck in armor for more than half a day. Whatever therapy Miranda had given her while she was out had let her regain most of her muscle tone, but nothing could make armor comfortable. 

Shepard willed herself to stay still and to listen, unblinking, as the Illusive Man gestured behind her. 

“I found a pilot I think you might like. I hear he’s one of the best.” 

She tried not to hope. 

“Someone you can trust,” said the Illusive Man, adding a particular twist on the last word. He cut off the conversation before Shepard could question him, but the sound of unsteady steps behind her pushed the Illusive Man out of her head. 

“Hey Commander. Just like old times, huh?” 

***

“I can’t believe it’s you, Joker,” Shepard said around a laugh. 

“Looks who’s talking, I saw you get spaced!”

“Got lucky, with a lot of strings attached.” _And Tali won’t look at me, so if I sound a little too happy to see you, let it pass._

At least Joker didn’t seem dismayed by her return, or by her new coworkers. He didn’t hug her, but he met her eyes without flinching. It was a start. 

 _Besides,_ she thought, as she followed him down a hallway, not fighting her grin, _we’re both delicate flowers. A hug could turn deadly. Or very messy._

Her grin faded when Joker, in a low, exhausted voice, told her about the Council’s  cover story -- Saren as a rogue agent, the geth firmly placed as galactic boogeymen -- and slipped away completely when he turned to the Alliance. 

_They grounded him._ She stared at the Cerberus patch on Joker’s sleeve, and forced herself not to curse. _The best damn pilot they’ve got, and they took away his wings. Of course, he’d still have them if I hadn’t stolen the_ Normandy. 

_Of course,_ she thought, rueful, _we might all be dead if I hadn’t._  

“So you really trust the Illusive Man?” she asked, when he paused for breath. 

Joker snickered. “I don’t trust anyone who makes more than I do. But they aren’t all bad. Saved your life. Let me fly.”

“You have a remarkable way of simplifying things,” she said, but thin relief trickled through her. “It’s good to see you, Joker,” she added, as sincerely as she could. 

He looked away, tugging his cap over his eyes. “And,” he said, voice rough, “there’s this.” They stopped in front of a bank of windows, privacy curtains drawn. “They only told me last night.” Joker hit the controls and stepped back to stand at Shepard’s side.

The curtains slid back with a low rush. Lights flickered along the far walls, illuminating the cool metal lines of --

“Damn.” Shepard sighed as the ship came back to life in front of her, glowing under the lights. “Hello, beautiful.” 

Joker grinned, lover’s warmth in his gaze. “It’s good to be home, huh Commander?” 

Shepard reached out to touch the window. Her fingers traced the _SR-2_ painted on the ship’s side. “Guess we’ll have to give her a name,” she said, even though she knew there was only one name for this ship, no matter what colors she wore. 

***

Shepard kicked her bag -- her _personal effects_ \-- through the doorway and stared.  

“I’ve got an entire floor to myself?” Shepard asked, half to herself.

EDI, as always, responded. “Yes, Commander. It was decided during the _SR-2_ ’s construction that the commanding officer’s quarters should be located away from the rest of the crew. Ms. Lawson’s quarters occupy what was once your cabin.” 

“Great,” said Shepard, any enthusiasm dampened. “You can log out now, EDI. Thanks.” 

“Logging you out, Shepard.” 

Shepard waited until the door to the -- _her_ \-- cabin closed before letting herself exhale. Some enterprising soul had already moved her armor -- her _real_ armor, not the pitiful bits of ceramic and metal she’d had to wear on the Lazarus Base -- into her closet. The bed was twice as big as any she’d ever slept in, the sheets turned down invitingly under thick pillows. Everything smelled new and clean, like fresh pine and lemons. In the background, a fish tank bubbled sweetly. A _fish tank._ On a war ship. 

She wanted to put her fist through it. She wanted to scream and smash her head against the pristine bulkhead. She half-reached for her biotics, just to be free of the hole in her head -- 

Tali had barely looked at her after the immediate shock faded. _Tali_ , who had been more at ease facing down Saren’s messengers down in the Citadel Wards than she had facing Shepard. Letting Veetor go home with Tali had been simple, choosing compassion over Cerberus’ interest, but it hadn’t been enough to make Tali make eye contact. 

What hurt most was Shepard’s growing certainty that this would be her future: finding old friends and watching them turn away when they saw what dogged her heels. She had thought stealing the _Normandy_ had been betraying her family. 

 _The costs just keep coming,_ she thought, staring at her hands, where the skin was red and sore.

Asking about the rest of the crew seemed doomed, after Freedom’s Progress, but weed-like hope half-strangled her. Seeing Tali reminded her of the desperate rush toward Saren, but those memories brought their quieter sisters: playing silent games of poker with Ash when neither of them could sleep, Kaidan’s perfect table manners, and the echo of a quiet _a-ha!_ from Liara’s quarters. 

They were _unavailable._ A pretty euphemism, coded to ease her mind, but the truth couldn’t be disguised. _Unreachable_ was more accurate. She’d have to do this on her own, with whoever lurked inside the Illusive Man’s dossiers.

 _Secure your shit, Shepard._ She ground the heels of her hands into her eyes. _If this is how you react the second you get any downtime, the Illusive Man’ll recycle you into vat-protein and feed you to the crew. Get it together._ _People -- not Cerberus -- are counting on you._  

She focused on breathing, alternating low, flat inhales with soft exhales until some of the ramrod stiffness melted out of her spine. Then she stripped, kicking off her boots and peeling away the Cerberus undersuit. The cool air raised gooseflesh on her bare skin, just this side of painful; it reminded her to take off her bra and panties with extra care. She still managed to snag one of the hooks on the skin over the notches in her spine and hissed as a hot trail of blood slipped down her back. 

Doctor Chakwas had warned her of the delicacy of her new skin, and the value of the cybernetics lurking underneath. 

“You’re a considerable investment, Commander,” said Chakwas, with a pleased smile, and Shepard held back her cringe long enough to make her escape. The doctor meant well. 

Everyone _meant_ well. Miranda with her checklists, Jacob with his tiptoe conversations, even Joker with his deliberate tactlessness -- they all _meant_ well. None of it helped. 

She stepped into the bathroom. Everything gleamed under the slick lights. Even her new skin shone -- where it wasn’t half-healed and glowing orange. 

 _All right, Shepard. Time to take stock._ Take stock, like her body was another delivery, to be checked off against a master list. Inventory. Investment. 

Shepard lifted her head and confronted her reflection. 

The scars on her belly were gone, along with the silvery teeth marks from some weird carnivore and the knife wound at the nape of her neck. Now, the skin between her breasts glowed fever-red, with ragged edges that stretched from the hollow of her throat to just below her ribs. A long line of tiny staples held together the skin on her left arm. A mercifully transient urge to pick the staples out tempted her, and she distracted herself by picking over the toiletries. Clean-scented, unisex products predominated, but a bottle of rose-scented body wash hid in the back. 

 _Thanks, Miranda_ , thought Shepard, a giddy laugh bubbling out of her for no good reason. She pushed the laugh away and focused. _Come on, don’t spare yourself. No one else gets a break, why should you?_  

She’d never given herself a break. Just because she wanted to didn’t mean she would, especially not now, when her own body felt like a jail cell. 

She faced the mirror head-on, and stared at the whole of her body. Same belly button, same hollow hips, same high brows arched in constant incredulity. Cerberus had even kept the twice-broken curve of her nose. They really had wanted her exactly the same. 

Except for her old scars. Those had to go. 

 _Meat and tubes,_ thought Shepard. She took a step toward the mirror, and then another, until her hips met the counter and her reflection doubled and warped. _I was meat and tubes, and before that I was ash and burned bones. What the hell was worth bringing back?_   

She stared at her reflection, willing an answer out of the cold surface. None came. 

“Guess it’s me against the universe,” she said, breath fogging the glass. “Again.” 

She laughed as she straightened. It hadn’t been this way before. The fight against Saren had been a team effort, the entire crew honed into a single unit: one blade, swung in a killing arc. 

And the edge of the blade had been her squad. Ash, Kaidan, Liara, Wrex, Tali, Garrus. 

Garrus.

“Where are you, big guy?” she asked her reflection. Conjuring his face was easier than she expected. “The Illusive Man knew where everyone else was. Why not you? You’re terrible at hiding your tracks. You’re --” Shepard laughed, pressing her forehead to the glass. “You’re still out there, right? I’d be pissed if you died.” She forced herself to say the last words. “Lonely, too. 

She shivered, and let the chilly air be her excuse. Shepard wrapped her arms around her chest, hands cupping her elbows, and stepped back from the mirror. Time enough for a shower, then bed. In the morning they’d set course for the Omega Nebula, and she’d build her team. 

“Fun times,” she murmured, ghosting her hands up her arms, testing her skin. When she reached her shoulders, she paused, frowning. 

“The hell?” She leaned forward, twisting to the side to get a better look. Three marks, pale as the whites of her eyes, dotted the ball of each shoulder. “The hell?” she said again. 

She stared at them for a long time, an obscure ache lodged in her throat, before she looked away and turned on the shower. 


	23. Chapter 23

A hot shower usually sent Shepard’s body into sleep-mode, but after twenty minutes under the stream, she was still wide awake. Her new cybernetics would keep her body moving long after the organic components gave up, but what muscles and nerves she had left felt slow and sick with fatigue. After her shower -- the water as hot as she could tolerate -- she padded into her cabin and toppled herself onto the bed, still naked.

_High thread count_ , she thought as she rolled onto her belly. _Guess I’ll have to thank Miranda for these too._

She stretched slowly from the shoulders down, using the breathing exercises her mother had taught her when her muscles cramped and twitched after gymnastics or biotics training.

_Deep inhale, hold your breath, sweetie, slow exhale._

_I know it hurts. Breathe it out. Deep inhale. Just like that. Good girl._

For a flickering moment, Shepard felt her mother’s hands between her shoulder blades, rubbing in slow circles. She sighed, reluctant to relax in what her mind still insisted on thinking of as enemy territory.

_Breathe it out, sweetie._

Shepard sighed. Her legs twitched as the overworked muscles loosened.

“I should call Mom,” she mumbled, and wish she hadn’t. Thinking about her mother grieving for two years, only to find out her daughter was still alive and with _Cerberus_ \--

_Better to let her hear through the grapevine, or not at all_ , Shepard decided, curling on her side. The Alliance had plants in Cerberus, she’d have bet her life on it, and the news of her return would start to spread soon. _Like mold._

A familiar cramp bit into her left thigh. Shepard rolled onto her back, digging her fingers into the thick muscle. The pain moved in thick waves under her hands.

“Dammit,” she gasped. Her leg stiffened and her hands slipped against her still-wet skin, tugging at the delicate layers. The fresh pain made her eyes water.

_Breathe it out,_ said her mother’s voice.  

“I’m trying,” she groaned, and punched herself in the thigh. “Dammit, I’m _trying.”_ She beat into the cramp, teeth gritted and head thrown back against the pillows. Tears slipped into her hair from the corners of her eyes.

_Breathe it out._ She emptied her lungs in a whoop, grinding her fist into the tight muscle. The cramp loosened, quick as it came. Shepard rolled on her side, knees drawn to her chest, and tried to catch her breath. An unexpected laugh bubbled out of her, relieved and giddy.

“Just like old times,” she murmured through her laugh. _I may look like a monster out of an old horror vid, but my legs are still going to freak out after twelve hours in armor. I’m still me._

Strange that some pain was a reassurance, and not to be feared. She laughed until the warm blanket of sleep cocooned her and carried her down into lightless silence.

***

Shepard had the strange experience of feeling spoiled for choice when she opened her closet five hours later. On the first _Normandy_ , she had the choice of blue fatigues or more blue fatigues when she wasn’t in full armor or working out. Now, someone -- probably Miranda, or a lackey working on Miranda’s orders -- had filled the shelves with neatly folded clothes, packaged in clear plastic bags.

Refusing to wear the Cerberus patch might look petty, but even if she was sure the Alliance no longer looked at her as a favored daughter -- or as their child at all -- she didn’t belong to Cerberus either. She hadn’t yet reckoned the cost of their partnership; nothing got a place on her body without her knowing the its exact price.

That left her with colonist work clothes, or a modified version of a researcher’s uniform. She peeled them out of the packaging and laid them on her bed.

Without a doubt, she knew the work clothes would be more comfortable. The joke was that they’d outlast a hurricane better than the wearer, and still feel like a pair of flannel pajamas. All advantages, except for all the skin left uncovered.

She glanced down at her body. The orange glow under her skin might -- _might_ \-- have faded slightly, but there were too many sharp edges, even on the _Normandy_. She shoved the work clothes back into their packaging and turned to the uniform. It would cover her from neck to toes, with conductors in the fingertips. Getting dressed felt like sealing herself inside a locked room, with the key on the outside.

_What if someone wants to touch me?_ Shepard wondered, watching as the white marks on her shoulders disappeared under the fabric. She laughed, the cracks on her cheek stinging, a reminder that being touched was the last thing she needed.

She brushed her hair behind her ears as thin strands escaped and clung to her face. _This is why I was trying to grow it out_ , she thought. _Maybe I’ll shave it off._

The thought of her face’s sharp angles without her hair to soften them made her shudder. Her features were already harsh enough; as much trouble as it was, her hair needed to stay. She lingered over the small cosmetics case she found in a desk drawer, but decided against her usual eyeliner and glosses. No matter what the labels claimed, an hour in full armor always made her sweat off any make-up she tried to apply. Better to save it for when it could last.

_At least I’m still practical. Check that off on the “am I still me” list._ She dusted her gloved hands on her thighs and faced the door. _Time to get to work._

A shadow unfolded itself next to her desk. Shepard turned, moving on instinct down the stairs toward cover, and saw the ragged shadow dissolve under the cold ceiling lights. Deep in her head, the hole twisted, and bramble thorns clutched at the spaces behind her eyes and above her amp. She reeled, vision greying out.

_Goddamn. Is this what Kaidan had to deal with?_ She blinked her eyes clear, focusing on breathing. _Goddamn._ The pain faded, but a cold, windswept feeling stayed with her, even after she got into the elevator.

***

“Unlimited funds, and Cerberus can’t spring for chairs in the briefing room,” Shepard murmured after a quick glance inside.

“Spent all of it on rebuilding you,” said Joker, a few steps behind her. She turned a blank stare on him, and he quailed back, hands held up in surrender. “Uh, money well spent, Commander.”

A grin tried to quirk her mouth. She turned her head to hide it. “You sure you want to be in on this meeting, Joker?” she asked. “There’s no reason for you to leave that armchair of yours.”

“I don’t want to miss the show.” Joker’s grin was all Shepard could see under the bill of his cap, but she knew its translation: _Time to wipe the floor with these morons_. “The old _arrive half an hour before the meeting’s scheduled to start_ gambit, right?”

“Something like that,” she answered, giving him a real grin this time. The briefing room smelled the same as her cabin: metal, new plastic, and --

“Coffee, Commander?” asked Miranda from the door. “Black, three sugars?”

Joker started to laugh and smothered it with a cough. Shepard took the proffered mug with a nod of thanks, noting Miranda hadn’t brought any for Joker.

_Oh, to be a fly on the wall when she met Joker for the first time._

The coffee smelled heavenly, like _actual_ coffee. She glanced at Miranda over the rim of the mug, quietly gratified when Miranda nodded.

“The real thing, Commander. I insisted.” Miranda preened a bit more obviously than usual and took a sip from her own mug.

_Probably takes it black,_ Shepard thought. _Black and thick enough to stand a spoon in. Just to prove a point._

The door slid open again, Jacob saluting as he entered. If he felt any surprise over being the last one to arrive at a meeting that wasn’t scheduled to start for another half hour, he didn’t show it. Shepard gave him a nod and finished half her coffee in a swallow.

She saw no reason to bother with introductions; by now, Miranda probably knew Joker almost as well as she knew Shepard, and Jacob seemed like the type to over-prepare.

“Good morning, everyone,” she said. “Thank you all for coming. If no one has any pressing concerns, we’ll get started. EDI, bring up the star map.”

“Of course, Shepard.” The room’s lights dimmed to half-strength, and the hollow in the table’s middle glowed as the star map formed in mid-air.

“I’ve gone over the dossiers.” She set her mug down on the table and braced her hands on the surface to lean forward. “It’s been recommended that we start on Omega and recruit Doctor Solus, and I see no reason to disagree. It’ll allow us to recruit Zaeed Massani and Archangel as well. Provided we’re able to find him.”

“That could prove difficult, Commander,” said Miranda. “Omega’s a maze, even for people who have lived their entire lives on the station. We don’t even have a base of operations for Archangel.”

“Doctor Solus may know,” Shepard replied. “According to the dossier, he’s run his clinic there for almost three years. He’s bound to know the ins and outs of his district, at least. It’s a place to start.”

“Agreed,” said Jacob. “We can question the clinic staff, too.”

Shepard met Jacob’s eyes through the star map. “I’d prefer to keep things civil.” She pushed off the table. “From my experience, Cerberus tends to ask questions at the barrel of a gun.”

“Or the end of a syringe,” said Joker. Shepard cut him a glare, cold fingers tracing her spine as Kahoku’s last message echoed in her head. Joker shrugged an apology, lips pressed in a tight line.

_What the hell have I gotten us into?_ _Everything comes with a damn price._ She resisted the temptation to rub her eyes, and shoved off the table.

_Remember what you’re fighting for. Remember Saren. Remember Sovereign._

Her gut still rolled. Her breakfast rations sat in her stomach in a greasy lump.

_Everything comes with a price._

“What can we expect when we dock?” She directed the question at Miranda, her eyes never leaving the star map.

“Other than the immediate need to shower?” Miranda folded her arms. “EDI?”

“There are reports of widespread illness throughout the wards,” replied the glowing interface. “The first verified reports began three days ago. A group of Blue Suns were the first known victims.”

“Nothing’s ever easy.” Shepard straightened and rubbed her shoulder. “How many are sick?”

“It is difficult to say. Few accurate population records are kept on Omega. Comm channels indicate that the infected now number close to two thousand,”

“In only three days?” Jacob whistled. “Sounds like a mean mother.”

“EDI,” asked Miranda. “In what districts is the disease concentrated?”

“It appears to be most virulent in the Gozu district, Ms. Lawson.”

“Ah,” said Miranda. She sipped her coffee. “Full biohazard armor, then.”

“That will not be necessary. The disease is extremely infectious, but it does not affect humans.”

Shepard paused, her fingers hooked around the handle of her mug. “Thanks for the good news, EDI,” she said. _Won’t have to deal with decontamination and open facial wounds. Small blessings._ “Joker, how far out are we?”

“We’re an hour from the relay, then two hours max at full burn to get to the station,” he answered.

“Right.” She flexed her fingers. “Enough time for weapons check before we get suited up. Massani will meet us at the docks, according to the dossier.  If no one has anything else, I’ll be in the Armory. You can log out now, EDI.”

“Yes, Shepard. Logging you out.”

The room’s lights came back up slowly. Across the table, Jacob and Miranda exchanged a private look. Shepard cleared her throat.

“Anything else?” she repeatedly pointedly.

Jacob shifted. “Commander, I’ve checked the weapons. Everything is in order.”

“I’m sure it is,” she said, tempering her voice. “Call it superstition, call it tradition, but I always give -- gave -- everything a look before an op.” No one flinched at her slip. “And I plan on doing so for the duration of our mission.”

Jacob saluted again. “Commander.”

“We’ll meet again in the shuttle bay.” She raised her mug, but her coffee had gone cold. “Dismissed,” she said, and stayed until everyone else had left the room.

***

Checking over the guns took far less time than Shepard hoped. With almost an hour left before she could reasonably head down to the shuttle bay, she took the elevator back up to her cabin, with the half-hearted intention of refining her biotics before leaving. Holding a gun gave her no issues, not even a shotgun, but her hands still twitched when she sent the dark energy flowing through her nerves.

She had no doubt she’d need her shotgun _and_ her biotics on Omega. Even from this distance, she felt the station’s presence press against her, constantly shifting.

“No time to get poetic, Shepard,” she murmured, and reached for her zipper. She dropped the suit on the floor and padded down the stairs toward her closet in her bra and panties. A quick investigation of her closet revealed a new workout suit, charcoal grey with blue trim, cut to her measurements.

_Miranda probably carries all of that in her head. It’ll make her useful when I can’t remember what my inseam is._

She tossed the workout suit on her bed and stooped to pick up a pair of exercise shoes. Her bare back broke out in unexpected goosebumps. She glanced over her shoulder on instinct, the shoes dangling from her fingers.

A dark shape flickered off to her left. Instead of folding back in on itself, it reformed, and presented arms, legs, a face --

Shepard rolled into a crouch behind the bed, already making the mental reach for her biotics. Her pistol sat on her desk, where she’d left it the night before.

_Too slow, Shepard_. _Get it together._

She formed the Pull in her head, a long blue hook, and threw it in an arc over the bed. Three-fifths of a second; that was how long it would take to send them flying across the room. She could make a run for her pistol then.

The internal jerk in her gut that echoed the Pull never came. She counted four seconds, fingers clenching around an imaginary pistol, and twisted to peer over the bed.

The shape moved.

It didn’t walk, or run. It simply disappeared, and reappeared on the bed, staring down at her. Shepard had a brief impression of black armor and black hair before she threw herself away, skidding across the floor toward the stairs. The shape’s arms flashed out, catching at the space where Shepard had just been crouched.

Her pistol lay inches from her fingers. She lunged up the stairs, knowing she had just exposed her back to the silent figure, and not caring. Her fingers brushed her pistol and sent it clattering off the desk.

_Shit. Shit. Shit._ She scrabbled for her pistol, left arm extended as far as her muscles allowed, and the staples in her skin tore free. Pain bursting in white sparks behind her eyes. When her vision cleared, the figure crouched in front of her, its face inches from hers.

“Shepard,” it said.

Shepard floundered, caught between wanting to cradle her bleeding arm and wanting to strike. Her hesitation lasted only a moment. She formed her right hand into a fist and swung for the figure’s head. Before she made contact, the figure disappeared, and something caught her wrist.

She pivoted, kicking out with her right leg, but it vanished, reappearing in front of her closet. It was a woman, with skin the color of brown sugar and a black tangle of hair.

“Shepard,” she said again. “My Shepard.”

“ _What?”_ Shepard shifted behind her desk and grabbed her pistol. She checked the thermal clip by feel.

_I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy, nothing’s there._

Something rustled to her left. She spun out of cover, pistol raised in her right hand. The first adrenalin burst hit her bloodstream.

The woman stood in front of Shepard, inches away. Shepard let out a strangled yell as the woman’s cold hands wrapped around her arms. At this distance, Shepard saw how the skin on the woman’s cheeks twisted into ridges.

“I was touched by fire,” said the woman.

_White eyes,_ Shepard’s mind gibbered. Her fingers went slack on her pistol and a chill spread through her, until her nerves were ice-locked and even the warmth of the blood on her arm disappeared.

“Not Alchera,” said the woman, her voice cracking. “Think of Omega, Shepard.”

“I --” Shepard’s gut twisted, sour spit filling her mouth. “I --”

“Think of Omega,” said the woman. “Do it.” She made a noise, like broken stones ground together, low in her throat.

_Omega._

“Omega, Shepard,” pleaded the woman. Something rough and pained rose out of the lower registers of her voice. “You need to -- move quickly.”

The world lurched sideways. Shepard’s head pounded as the hole stretched, its emptiness spilling over the edges.

“No!” She threw herself away and hit the floor belly-first, hard enough to knock the wind out of her lungs. The hallucination broke apart; the hole shrunk, muttering to itself, and went silent.

Shepard pressed her face to the tile and tried to breathe. She lifted her head slowly, blinking the last of the fractals away. The woman was gone.

“The hell,” she murmured to the room. She pulled her knees to her chest and waited, eyes closed, until she stopped shaking. “I’m not crazy,” she whispered. “I’m not. I was _dead_. Who knows what’s floating around in my head?”

All around her, the _Normandy_ shivered as it slowed and began its approach.

***

Shepard dressed slowly: black undersuit, black protective mesh, and then the layers of red metal and ceramics. She kept her mind a careful blank, _tabula rasa_ , until the white eyes rose in her vision again.

_Move quickly. Think of Omega._

Her hand slipped on a clasp and the nails on her thumb and index finger split down to the quick.

_“Fuck!”_ she yelled. The pain gnawed its way up her arm. “What the _fuck!”_

_I’m not crazy. I’m not_ , she thought, desperate. _I’m not crazy._

She heard a high whining sound and realized, chest heaving, that it was coming from her. Her hands flew to her mouth and tried to shut the sound behind her teeth, but it buzzed in her head, behind her eyes.

_If I’m not crazy, then what am I?_ _What am I?_

Her body tightened around her. Muscles snapped wire-tight, in direct opposition to the adrenalin getting dumped into her bloodstream. Trapped. The panic-signals her brain sent out -- _run move flee fight run run run run --_ stopped at the base of her skull, and she stayed silent, locked in place.

She had felt like this before, when the shadow towered over her and the only thing she could hear were the screams of her unit as they died, paralyzed.

_This body is a cage_ , she thought, and the shaft of despair that followed the idea broke through her paralysis.

“ _Fuck!”_ she yelled again, broken and half a sob, and swung her right fist at the wall.

She didn’t pull the punch at the last second; her fist hit the wall with all her strength behind it. The broken nails hurt, the open wounds on her face hurt, everything _hurt_ , but the moment of connection was agony. Vicious, furious _agony_ , as the not-healed, fragile bones of her hand and fingers creaked with hairline fractures. The impact traveled up her arm, through her shoulder, up her neck, and sank deep in her head.

The hole waited, patient and empty.

“I’m not crazy,” she whispered, and shivered at the sound of her own voice. “I’m me. Whatever that was -- it can wait.”

Shepard straightened and breathed in. Her hands were steady. Slowly, she unclenched her fist and flexed the fingers. They moved smoothly, despite the low note of pain still singing in them.

_You’re mine,_ she told her body. _I’m not yours. That’s not how it works. Listen to me. Listen._

A moment later, when the worst of the pain in her hand had faded, she picked up her visor and set it over her eye. She felt clean, controlled; she felt ready.

All the deep breathing couldn’t banish the woman’s voice from her head, or make her ignore the way her body pulled at her control, toward Omega. She set her teeth and walked to the elevator.

***

“I’m looking forward to starting the work, Commander,” said Jacob, as she passed him on the way to the airlock. “If we even get half of our recruits, the Collectors won’t know what hit them.”

The temptation to like Jacob -- or to at least return some small part of his efforts -- finally won, and she smiled at him. She enjoyed optimism, when it didn’t cost her anything.

“We’re raising an army, Mr. Taylor,” she said. “Half the battle will be getting everyone to work together.”

Jacob nodded, like he had already considered this and left his doubts far behind. “Whatever comes, I’m with you.”

“I appreciate it.” She turned her head toward Miranda, who watched without expression. “I’m not going to have to worry about my orders not being followed, am I, Ms. Lawson?”

Miranda gave every impression of rolling her eyes without twitching a muscle. “There won’t be a problem, Commander,” she answered, and brought up her omni-tool display, blocking Shepard’s view of her face.

Shepard checked the clasps on her armor again. With the last possible delay used up, she nodded toward the airlock. “Move out.”

They barely made it on the station before a salarian melted out of the murky yellow light, face creased in a smile.

“Ah, welcome to Omega! You’re new here, I can always tell! Welcome to -- to --” A broad, armored hand snatched the salarian’s shoulder and pulled him back before he could finish his patter.

“Leave, Fargut,” said the batarian that was attached to the hand. “Now.”

“Aah, right away! Whatever she wants!” The salarian shrank away from Shepard, his grin thin and watery, and crab-walked back into the shadows. The batarian watched him go, sneering, before he turned to Shepard.

“You’re expected,” he said. “Aria wants to see you. Now.”

_Ah yes, Omega’s queen_. The Irish-stubborn part of Shepard’s nature rose to the forefront, and her body followed its orders: hip cocked, arms folded, eyebrows arched. _Tell her she can wait, I’ve got a doctor and an angel to find. Time’s wasting._

“I’m not here to cause trouble,” she said instead. “I’m making a few pick-ups, and then I’ll be on my way. No mess, no fuss.” Even though it galled her, she added, “I don’t care what she’s got going on here. Get out of my way.”

The batarian sneered again. Behind Shepard, Jacob shifted. She bit her lip; Wrex was less obvious about going for his gun.

“Things explode around you, Shepard. I’d say that’s enough to make anyone sane worry. Not to mention how you look pretty good for a dead woman. Aria’s got questions.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Afterlife, _now_.” Message delivered, the batarian sauntered away.

“That was the welcoming committee?” asked Jacob. Neither Shepard nor Miranda answered him.

“In the interests of diplomacy,” Shepard said, measuring her words carefully, “we can spare the time.”

_Can we?_ The jitters were in her fingers now, and the crackle of her amp echoed in her head. _Can we?_ She shoved the thought away and started down the hall, her boots ringing on the metal floor. Someone screamed nearby, and a second voice swore and told them to be silent. Shepard unholstered her pistol and spun a thermal clip into place with her thumb.

In a pool of dirty light, a human seemed to be kicking a batarian in Blue Suns armor to death. Her stomach sank. She’d hoped for more time before she needed to make this particular pick-up.

“Zaeed Massani?” The human aimed one last kick at the batarian’s stomach before he straightened to look at her.

“Yeah, who’s askin’?” He rested his foot on the batarian’s shoulder.

Shepard stopped a few steps away, just shy of a milky yellow puddle. “Commander Shepard,” she said. “I was told you were expecting me.”

“Oh yeah.” Zaeed rocked back on his heel. “Cerberus’ pet Spectre.”

_That’s going to get real old, real fast_. Shepard kept her face neutral, even as she replied. “Half right.” Behind her, Miranda coughed into her hand. “I assume you’ve been briefed?” she asked.

“I’ve done my homework.” Zaeed’s scars puckered. “You know about my arrangement?”

Shepard bit the inside of her lip. “No,” she said carefully. “Lay it on me.”

Miranda made her delicate throat-clearing noise. “Commander, the Illusive Man --”

“Ever heard of Vido Santiago?” interrupted Zaeed. Shepard noted he hadn’t looked at Jacob or Miranda since they had started talking. One potential fracture already, and she hadn’t even gotten on the station. She shook her head. Zaeed snorted. “He’s a bastard. Runs the Blue Suns. I want him dead. That’s my asking price.”

“Killing a merc?” said Jacob. “Not exactly a stretch.”

Shepard cut him a look over her shoulder. Zaeed snorted again. She turned back to him, considering the scars, the tattoos, the cold eggshell-colored eye.

_Is this a guy I want on my team? He’s not a merc, he’s a menace._

_Jacob’s a gun for hire and Miranda’s wrapped around the Illusive Man. You’re not going to do much better, unless Mordin’s a saint and Archangel lives up to his name._

“One less Blue Sun in the galaxy?” She held out her hand. “I think we’ve got a deal.”

Zaeed shook, smiling without any joy. His grip was firm, but not cruel. “I think we do. This little bastard’s been giving me intel on Santiago, ain’t that right?” He jerked his head at the batarian, who chose that moment to let out a groan. Zaeed kicked him again. “Shut up, you piece of --”

The batarian slid out from under his foot and and scrambled away. Zaeed pulled his pistol, the thermal clip humming as it whicked away the heat, but Shepard moved faster. She kicked out to the left and caught the batarian in the knee. He went down with a grunt and didn’t move.

Zaeed made an impressed noise. “I think I could like you, Shepard.”

She gave him a charmless smile. “Get your gear,” she answered. 

***

Shepard gave the batarian five seconds for his scan before she pulled out her gun.

“If you’re looking for weapons, you’re not doing a very good job.”

“Can’t be too careful with dead Spectres,” said the slender figure at the top of the stairs. It turned into the light slowly, a typically stunning asari forming out of the shadows. Shepard stifled the urge to curtsy. Amusing as it would be, it wasn’t exactly politically expedient. “That could be anyone wearing your face.”

_Oh it’s me,_ Shepard thought, and sat down when Aria gestured at the sofa. _I’m just not sure I remember who that is anymore._

“So you have questions for me,” she said, once Aria had arranged herself opposite Shepard and her lackeys returned to their places. “Let’s hear them.”

“I _wanted_ to know what the legendary Commander Shepard was doing with a bunch of Cerberus drones, but one look at you told me you’re not with them, so much as you’re suffering their presence to get something accomplished.” Aria’s eyes shone red in the pink lights. “You could tell me what you want on my station, for starters.”

“What do you know about Mordin Solus?” Shepard let the question form her answer.

Aria’s painted brows rose in fleeting surprise before a pleased smile touched her mouth. “The salarian? He’s down in the Gozu district, trying to cure Omega of its ills.” Her smile turned icy and slipped away, even as her voice warmed. “I always liked Mordin. A little crazy. He’s as likely to shoot you as he is to heal you.”

“You two go way back?”

“You could say that.” Aria leaned back against her couch. “You can try taking a shuttle to the quarantined area. I won’t stop you from going after him if you want him, but if you bring the plague back with you --”

Shepard waved away the implied threat. The barefaced turian on her right took a step forward, reaching for his gun, but Aria shook her head. Amusement, sharp and fleeting, gleamed in her eyes. Shepard allowed herself a brief burst of satisfaction at judging Aria correctly, then pressed her luck.

“What about Archangel?”

Aria stiffened, smirking now, and Shepard sucked in a breath. “Typical vigilante, but he was more effective than the rest. More fun to watch. Omega’s avenger.” She turned her bright gaze on Shepard. “Why? You want him dead too?”

“No,” Shepard answered, as evenly as she could. “Is he in trouble?”

“You could say that,” said Aria, like she was talking about an enormously satisfying vid. “Half the station wants him dead. The major merc groups -- Eclipse, Blue Suns, and Blood Pack -- have all teamed up to take him out. They already got his squad. He’s held out for almost twenty-four hours on his own.” Aria tapped a long finger on her knee. “Must be getting tired,” she mused.

_Well, shit,_ Shepard thought, as a tremble stretched out, razor-fine, along her nerves. The woman’s voice rang in her head. _Move quickly._ “Do you know where I can find him?” She knew she was giving too much away; her voice sounded plaintive, like a little girl’s. Aria’s gaze sharpened. She looked a second away from licking her lips.

“Kima district,” said Aria, after a long pause in which Shepard didn’t fidget or change expression. Her lack of response seemed to disappoint the asari. “And you’re in luck. The mercs are recruiting freelancers downstairs. You’ve got a perfect entrance, if you want to save him. Or kill him,” she added. “Either way, it’ll be a good show.”

“Sounds like you hate Archangel too,” Shepard hedged, trying to keep her hands from shaking. The urge to run was in every muscle.

“I don’t have time to hate,” said Aria. She watched Shepard, almost smiling. In the low light, she looked very old and very beautiful. “He amused me, which is more than most manage. I’ll tell you this much, Shepard, because watching you tear through mercs is going to be the most fun I’ve had in months. Move now, or don’t go at all. Archangel’s almost finished.”

Shepard’s gut twisted. _Move quickly._ She gave Aria a nod and went down the steps as quickly as self-preservation allowed, only stopping when Aria called her name.

"Someday you'll have to tell me what it was like. Being dead." 

“You assume I’ll remember,” Shepard said over her shoulder.

“Oh, you will.” Aria’s smile never wavered. “That’s not something you can forget forever.”


	24. Chapter 24

Shepard doubted the kid would take her advice and get his money back, but at least he looked like he would think twice before signing up. The door closed on him as he stared down at his pistol, a worried pucker creasing the skin between his eyes.

"Dumb kid," said Jacob, all easy sympathy. "Good thing you were there, Commander."

She shrugged, eyes ahead. Afterlife had filled considerably since they entered, and the dancing had progressed from uninhibited to desperate. They maneuvered through the crowd and out into the brighter, quieter entryway, then into the station proper. The temperature dropped a few degrees, but the desperate current in the air stayed.

Shepard glanced toward the shuttle bay, where a batarian in a Blue Suns uniform leaned against a wall, deceptively relaxed.

 _Looks like I know who's running the show now_. She stepped into the merc's sightline and blocked Zaeed from his view.

"All right, we're going to play this - Miranda, do you have something to add?"

Miranda blinked, surprise flickering over her features before she smoothed her mouth into a polite, flat line. "Isn't our time better spent recruiting Dr. Solus? A counter-measure against the Collectors -"

_Move quickly._

"I appreciate the input, Miranda, but Dr. Solus doesn't have a time limit, or three merc companies with grudges going after him." Shepard adjusted her visor. "Archangel is our priority. Let's move."  _We'll just leave out the part where a hallucination told me to hurry._

Miranda opened her mouth to protest, but seemed to think better of it.

Shepard turned to Zaeed. "You're heading back to the  _Normandy_."

He broke off glaring over her shoulder at the Blue Sun to glare at her. "Like hell I am."

"Like hell you aren't," she fired back, nerves lighting up with bursts of adrenalin. She felt like she had just been doused with cold water: twice as awake, every movement edged with a shiver. Her tone made Zaeed take a step back. Shepard couldn't imagine what her face looked like. "You've got baggage with the Blue Suns, and I won't let it risk the mission."

"Word's gotten out by now I'm on the station," he said, low and cold. "They'll wonder if I don't show up."

He might have been right, but under the jitters and the adrenalin fugue, Shepard felt the battle-spell settle around her. She gambled. Head back, eyes slitted, she met Zaeed's gaze. "You want your old buddies to see you roll in with a bunch of freelancers?"

"Or Cerberus?" interjected Miranda, matching Shepard's tone flawlessly. The reflective edge of Shepard's visor picked up Jacob's image as he crossed his arms.

Zaeed favored each of them with a glare, but Shepard saw the miniscule drop in his shoulders, and hid a smile. She nodded and turned away, not waiting to see if he followed her orders. With someone like Zaeed, you never showed doubt. There was a chance he wouldn't be on the  _Normandy_  when they got back, and she'd have to deal with the Illusive Man then, but for now -

"Let's get ourselves an angel," she said. Miranda gave her the tiniest hint of a smile, and walked at her side toward the shuttle.

_***_

_I don't like this salarian. Not because he's a merc, not because he's in my way. Because he's an asshole._

If time had been on her side, if she didn't have the Collectors to worry about, Shepard would have happily wrung Jaroth's neck and walked away without a regret. She clasped her hands behind her back, just in case her self-control wavered, and attempted to look stupid and over-eager.

"So what can you tell me about Archangel?"

Jaroth put his elbows on the table and smiled as distant shouts and rifle fire echoed through the room. "His life expectancy is shortening quickly."

Shepard stifled the urge to run toward the gunshots. "Anything else?" Her tone, borderline belligerent, made Jaroth glance up with narrowed eyes.

"His squad managed to hide for two years right under our radar, so don't kid yourself if you think you're the one who's going to take him down. He's smart and he's fast." Jaroth's smile turned nasty. "But he doesn't have his squad anymore. Not even that kid he had as his tech expert. Won't be long now." He glared at Shepard, his smile fading. "Is that all, or can I get back to work? These mechs are more vital than you are."

Shepard held up her hands and took a step back. "Fine," she said, with just a touch of insolence. "I'm out of here."

_Out of here, and off to find wherever you keep your mechs. Idiot._

_***_

"The more I hear about Archangel, the more I like him," said Jacob. He checked the thermal clip in his pistol and offered Shepard a grin. "A one-on-one fight with Garm? Breaking into Tarak's base? Ops like that take serious guts."

Miranda stepped around a puddle, wrinkling her nose at the smell. "A serious team, too. Who are all currently dead. It makes you wonder if going after Archangel is the best course of action."

Shepard walked faster. She had a datapad folded into a pouch on her leg she thought Aria would be  _very_ interested in, but that would wait. Now, she turned over her conversations with Garm and Jentha slowly, waiting for something to gleam in the darkness.

_Someone who can hold off Garm. Someone bold enough to go after Tarak at home. Someone who managed to hide in the mercs' backyard for two years. Who is this guy?_

Scraps of information were all she had. A turian, with a serious hero complex and a massive grudge against mercs - almost enough to make her hope.

_I don't have time for hope._

The Blue Suns glared at her and her squad from cover, and she wished she had taken the time to kit Jacob and Miranda out in something other than their Cerberus uniforms. Too late now, and prying Miranda out of her uniform would only happen when the woman was dead.

Shepard squashed that line of thought and scanned the corridor. A barricade had been set up at the end of the bridge - presumably by Archangel, or his dead squad - and two freelancers crouched beneath it, popping out of cover in turns to fire at a balcony. She leaned against a wall with her back to the bridge to get out of the firing line, and looked over her shoulder.

A blue-armored figure, small and fragile from this distance, rose out of cover on the balcony and fired back. One of the freelancers tumbled back, cursing and clutching at a charred hole in his armor.

"Missed my heart by an inch!" the man yelled, with the telltale wheeze of a punctured lung.

"Half an inch," murmured Shepard, as one of the other freelancers dragged him into cover. The burnt-sugar smell of medi-gel wafted toward her. Jacob whistled.

"What's our plan, Commander?" whispered Miranda.

Shepard swept the corridor again, her eye catching the stark angles of a gunship a dozen meters ahead. A lone batarian bent over a console, soldering a few last connections.

 _So that's Cathka. Thanks for the intel, Jentha._ Shepard turned to Miranda, her pulse so quick it was almost a tremble. "First things first. I think Cathka's working too hard, don't you?"

A beat later, Miranda nodded. "Couldn't agree more, Commander. Why don't we give him a break?"

***

Shepard stepped over Cathka's body. She never counted on luck, but with just a little of it, the Blue Suns wouldn't discover his body until she was already in the base.

"Let's move," she snapped over her shoulder. "Archangel doesn't have a lot of time."

The last wave of freelancers had just vaulted over the barricade. Archangel whipped out of cover in a blur of cobalt and sniped two of them before they landed. Shepard felt a low rush of heat, mixed with admiration, and let herself grin. Hell of a fighter, to have lasted so long alone, and to not show any signs of slowing.

She leapt over the barricade, legs bent to absorb her weight, and straightened. From her position, she saw the quickest freelancers disappear into the base, and hoped Archangel could hold them off while she moved in.

"Commander! Watch -"

A concussive round slammed into her left shoulder. Her barriers absorbed the worst of the impact, but her shoulder went numb and the new bandage over the gash in her arm strained to hold her skin together. She stumbled back, gasping as the air rushed out of her lungs, and looked up in time to see Archangel ducking back down into cover.

 _Bastard_ , she thought, as the battle-spell pulsed in her ears.  _I'm on your side._ She unholstered her shotgun and checked the clip as she rolled her shoulder, wincing.

One of the freelancers turned around in cover, staring at her with wide eyes.

"What the hell are you doing?" he hissed. "He's fucking crazy! Get down!"

Shepard gave him a radiant smile. For the first time since she woke up, she and her body were in complete agreement about what to do.

"Good advice," she said, smile still in place, and lifted her shotgun. The merc had a second to look surprised before she fired.

The gunshots from the balcony paused.

A tight knot of freelancers turned at the sound of her shot, and the one closest to her went whey-faced as comprehension dawned.

"Holy shit, they're with Archangel!" He raised his assault rifle, but Miranda let loose a chatter of SMG fire that blew through his shields like a scythe.

"Charging!" Shepard yelled, her voice high and pure over the screams and gunshots, and threw herself into the silent corridor. She slammed into a freelancer on her exit, and  _felt_  the pressure of the corridor's collapse and her weight crush the man's armor.

She threw her head back and swept the field as her barriers flickered back to full strength.  _I'm me. I'm still me._

Two mercs tried to flank her on the left, with a third moving in to cut her off from behind. Shepard spun on the balls of her feet, already snapping off a Shockwave to her left, but before she could bring up her shotgun to fire on the third merc, he collapsed with a hole through his throat.

There was more than one way to make an apology. She was glad Archangel had chosen such a practical method.

"Jacob, on my nine! Miranda -"

"Moving out!" she shouted back. "Commander, bomb tech!"

"I see him!" Shepard sent a blue hook spiraling down her arm to shudder out of her palm. The bomb tech tried to roll behind cover, but the Pull snatched him up and tossed him over Shepard's head. A second later, Jacob's pistol barked out a sharp cough and the Pull's echo in her gut died.

Shepard had heard battle described as a symphony, or as music. It was neither. Battle was a dance with no audience, a competition to see who would be the last still moving. She prided -  _had prided_  - herself on her efficiency, on her economy of movement. Fighting was the only time she allowed herself to be graceful.

A merc ran between cover, headed for the bomb. Shepard made a quick calculation as she glanced from behind her own sheltering crate, and hoped Miranda and Jacob could hear her.

"Frag out!" She whipped out of cover, fired, and whipped back behind her crate in one smooth pivot. The bomb went off, a rush of heat and light blowing past her. After it passed, she peered around the edge of the crate. Her way into the base was clear.

"On me!" She sprinted into what looked like a common room and ducked behind a couch. Jacob and Miranda slid in on either side. Shepard held up a hand to keep them silent, and listened. Nothing moved. Even the constant stream of freelancers from over the barricade had stopped.

"Move out. I want a full sweep of this floor before we move up. Grab any thermal clips you find, and mark potential exits. We're going to have to fight our way out."

"Copy that."

At Miranda's nod, Shepard stood, shotgun raised, and scanned the perimeter as Jacob and Miranda moved into the room. All of them saw the bodies at the same time.

"Oh, my God," breathed Miranda. "They really did kill them all."

Ten bodies, laid out in two orderly rows, covered with bloody blankets. Shepard reeled back, fighting a wave of dizziness. Archangel had been fighting with the bodies of his friends below him. No wonder he had held out so long, and so desperately. She ached for him. It was too easy to imagine Kaidan under the blankets, or Tali.

"Dammit," she murmured, as the dizziness fell away, replaced by dry grief. Miranda nodded, her cheeks pale.

Jacob knelt by the smallest figure, and pulled back the corner of the blanket. He flinched away from whatever he saw. "Commander, it's -"

"Leave her alone," said Shepard. "She's been through enough." She wrenched her eyes away from the bodies, but not quickly enough to miss the look Jacob and Miranda exchanged.

A faint metallic scraping echoed over their heads, followed by the slow ticking of a bypass. Shepard focused, straining to hear footsteps, breathing, anything that would give her an idea of what to expect.

"Two mercs," she whispered. "Hacking the door to the balcony. On me!"

She ran for the stairs, legs pumping, not bothering to hide her movements. Enough time had been wasted.

At the top of the stairs, the mercs were waiting for her.

"Get her!" shouted the one at the door. The bypass was almost finished. "Take her down, you idiot!"

The second merc leaned out of cover to fire, but Shepard wasn't there. She was in the corridor, rushing toward him as the air tore out of her mouth. The impact crushed his chest. He collapsed, gurgling, and the bypass chimed its completion.

 _Not a chance,_  she thought as the second merc tried to slide through the door, a black rage filling her to brimming. She lashed out with a Pull to slow him down, yanking him back down the hallway. He slithered across the tiles, screaming, until Jacob shot him in the jaw.

Shepard shivered and tried to shake off the thick, disbelieving fury that clung to her. She rolled her shoulders, testing her amp for fatigue with careful mental fingers, and glanced back at Jacob and Miranda.

The door was open. She saw Archangel's dark form at the balcony, sighting down to the bridge.

Shotgun raised, she crossed into the room. Twelve bunks lined the far walls; the room smelled lived-in, the air heavy with old exhalations. This was where Archangel's squad lived, she realized, and had to force down another wave of dizziness.

His back was to her, the sharp curves of his armor lined with grey light. She stopped a few feet away and lowered her shotgun. Her lips were dry.

"Archangel?" she said, and watched him slump down against the wall, exhaustion written in every line of his body.

He held up a hand. A breath later, he squeezed the trigger, and the distant sound of a body hitting the floor filtered to her ears.

Archangel turned from the bridge. His helmet hid his face, but he flicked open its seals as he crossed to a low pile of crates and sat down. She shifted her weight and tried to strangle her impatience.

He kept his head down after his helmet was off, but he said her name, and the breath tumbled out of her.

"I thought you were dead," said Garrus.

Exhausted beyond telling, rough and thin - but she would never mistake that voice. When he lifted his head, not quite meeting her eyes, she couldn't stop the helpless, giddy laugh that spun out of her mouth. A part of her, untouched by cold or confusion, opened to him, and she felt relief so great it felt like a sickness.

"Garrus!" He was  _here_ , in front of her, and alive. She had found him. Her feet carried her almost within arms'-reach before she stopped herself and just beamed at him.

_Not a good time to go running into his arms, Shepard. No matter how happy you are to see him._

"Garrus, what are you doing here?"

He gave her a fleeting glance, his face younger than ever without his visor. For the moment their gazes touched, something hungry flickered in his eyes. He lifted his arm toward her, but whatever gesture he wanted to make died before he touched her, his hands moving to clench around his rifle.

" _Commander Shepard? Garrus Vakarian."_

_She saw Anderson at the bottom of the steps, waving her forward, but she gave the turian a second look. Bulky C-Sec armor, blue markings, steel in his spine - he could have been any one of hundreds of turians she had passed as she ran through the Citadel - except for the visor blinking over his eye, and the eager slope in his voice. She still might have forgotten him if she hadn't run into him at the clinic, if her rebuke hadn't changed something in his gaze._

His armor was heavier now, his shoulders slumped under the weight, but it was  _Garrus_. She couldn't care about the faint unease in her belly, or the mercs left to fight. How many missions had they gone on together, fighting about who had the worst food, who had the better guns. He and Kaidan had been with her at the end, when Sovereign turned Saren's corpse into a sick joke and they had to fight their way through broken glass and steel.

_Garrus was the first one to see her when she climbed out of the wreckage, bloody and breathless. She knew his face well enough to see how he smiled as she limped toward them, cradling a broken elbow, and she responded with a grin of her own, her first real one in months._

Back in the real world, in the stink and heat of Omega, Garrus didn't smile, or even look at hers. He answered her with his eyes on the floor.

"I got fed up with all the bureaucratic crap on the Citadel. Figured I could do more good on my own."

She grinned again. Impossible to  _not_  grin, when he sounded so much like himself she expected to see the Mako looming beside them. Garrus slumped down even farther, shooting her glances from under his browplates, blinking too fast. Her grin faltered. It was  _Garrus_ , alive and in reach, after God knew what he'd gone through, but her joy felt sticky and ghoulish, with the bodies of the squad -  _Garrus'_  squad - laid out in orderly lines below them. Lines Garrus had put them in, as he mourned.

"On Omega?" She stopped, her mood snuffed out like a candle in a windy room. "Your squad, Garrus, I saw. I'm sorry."

He made a quick, convulsive movement. She saw his throat working, and he shook his head, raising his eyes to hers. No one had ever looked at her like that, with so much hunger in their gaze that it made her throat go dry.

"Is it you?" asked Garrus. "I've - I've seen a lot of things these past few hours, Shepard. I have to know if you're here. Real."

"I'm here," she said, stumbling over the words. She knew they weren't enough by the way Garrus tightened, mandibles flat against his jaw. There was more to say, but _what_ and  _why_  - she had no idea.

Garrus' gaze moved restlessly over her face. Shepard resisted the urge to turn away; if he was looking for her old scars, he was out of luck.

"I know, I look like I got mauled." She brushed her mouth with her fingertips. "But it's me." She gestured at Jacob and Miranda, but Garrus never took his eyes from her face. "Long story," she finished, her voice going thready at the end.

Garrus bent like he'd been caught in a heavy wind. His head dropped between his shoulders, and he shrank into himself. Shepard wanted to touch him, to offer what reassurance she could, but held herself back. The effort made her ache. No one had ever looked so defeated.

"Archangel?" she forced out, when the silence pressed against her eardrums. "Where'd that come from?"

Garrus flinched, the tiny movement almost lost in his armor. The urge to touch him, to search him for wounds under his armor, to give what comfort she could, made her hands twitch toward him.

_Focus, Shepard. If you start touching him, you won't stop. He'll think you're crazy if he doesn't already._

"It's just a name the locals gave me for all my good deeds. But it's just - just Garrus to you." A thick, unfamiliar note crept into his voice.

 _Yes,_  she thought, not knowing why. She shook the thought away, turned her mind from the emptiness in the center, and brought herself back to the moment.

"You know you shot me once, right? Quite a welcome."

"Concussive rounds only. I needed - I needed to get you moving." He wouldn't look up. His eyes stayed fixed on his rifle. Something in the intensity of his gaze made the skin on her back itch she took a ste p closer.

"Well, I'm here. Getting out's not going to be easy." Behind her, Miranda huffed in agreement, the first noise either she or Jacob had made since they got to Archangel's room.

"No," he murmured. "The bridge has saved my life, funneling all those witless idiots into scope. But we can't get out that way." He pushed himself to his feet, weary and slow, lifting his rifle. His feet tangled under him and he stumbled, groping behind him for support. Shepard grabbed for his arm, but he threw himself out of her reach, his breath coming heavy and short. She watched as he staggered back another step, catching his balance as he retreated from her, cringing.

_Did you think you could be a hero, Shepard? Did you think you'd reach out and he'd look at you like a savior? You're a ghost in a building filled with death._

"Garrus," she said. She gentled her voice, the way she would for the terrified and the weary. "You had my back for six months. I know it's been a while for you, but has that much changed since...?"

Loyalty: the cleft that split Garrus down the center. Part of her cringed away from using it like this, but she needed to know if he could be pulled back from where he'd gone. His eyes snapped up, a instant's fury in his gaze, before he slumped again, and shook his head. The heat surprised her, and for a moment she hovered on the edge of complete honesty.

_Come on, Garrus. I need you._

Hate filled her until she felt drunk on it: hate for the mercs, hate for whatever had broken Garrus so completely, even hate for Miranda and Jacob, who had brought her back only to show her how she could never go home.

"God, Garrus, I know I'm -" She cut herself off.  _You're getting clouded. Breathe it out._

"Stims," said Miranda, cold disgust lining the word. Shepard and Garrus both looked at her. She folded her arms and stared at Garrus with perfect contempt. "He's on stims, Commander. God knows how many."

Shepard gaped. She wanted to shout Miranda down _\- not Garrus, he'd never touch the stuff, dulls your reaction time, makes you careless_  - and she turned, furious, to see the woman gave her a tiny nod.

 _Dammit. Smooth, Miranda._ If she hadn't been so wrapped up in Garrus, she'd have recognized the playacting for what it was. Miranda had given Garrus something to hate, and saved him from immobility. Shepard brushed the tip of her tongue over the inside of her lip and started to form an order, but Garrus cut her off before she could speak.

"Cerberus," he spat, rounding on Miranda. "Physical torture isn't enough anymore?"

"Hey, enough!" snapped Shepard. She stepped between them.  _No time for sweet talk now._ "We have to figure out a way to get out of here,  _together._ " Garrus glared at Miranda, almost panting, fists clenched. "Garrus. Garrus!" When he didn't respond, she shouted. "Vakarian! Eyes on me!"

He jolted. His eyes met hers, just a brief, bewildered touch, but she saw the way he straightened.  _Thank God. I won't have to drag him out of here._

"By now, the mercs know their freelancers are dead," she hissed. "What can we expect?"

He shook his head. "I don't -"

"Think! You know this station." She took a step into his space and held his gaze without blinking. "You know the mercs. Three groups. Who'll come first?"

"They'll all attack at once," he said immediately. He still sounded lost, but some of the old sharpness crept back into his voice. "They sent in the freelancers, and next they'll send in the mechs. If all that doesn't work, they'll join forces and try to wipe us out. None of the groups have the numbers to pull off an attack by themselves. Not after -" He stared at his rifle and shook his head.

"Explains why they had to recruit freelancers." Jacob gave Garrus a speculative look. "You guys really cut them down, huh?"

Garrus laughed once, like stones rubbed together.

"The mechs worry me," said Miranda. "On their own, they're not much of a threat, but with that YMIR, we could have trouble."

Shepard grinned. It was nothing like the smile she'd given Garrus when he took his helmet off. A wolf's smile. "Don't forget, the mechs won't be as helpful as they're hoping."

Garrus blinked. "You - hacked them all?"

"Remember Tali's trick on Therum?" Garrus nodded reluctantly. "Jaroth tries to start one of them up, and it'll overload every processor in fifty yards." She glanced at Garrus, as a distant, whining  _thwoom_ echoed over the bridge. "That's the mechs taken care of. And that's why it pays to have friends," she said, around her wolf's smile. She wasn't sure who she was talking to: Garrus, or Miranda and Jacob. Or herself.

Garrus' gaze moved hungrily over her face before he gave her a turian smile that looked as horrible as hers felt. "Sabotaging mechs," he said, in a new, flat voice. "Too bad you weren't here two days ago."

"I'm here now, Garrus. I -"  _I didn't move quickly. I'm sorry._ Her body wanted to shy away from the cold iron in his voice and curl into itself. "Got anything else for us?"

He took his time answering, picking up his visor and turning it over in his hands before clipping it back into place.

 _Oh,_  thought Shepard, before she could slap the thought down.  _There you are._

"Jaroth," he said, voice tight. "They - my squad - killed his brother. He's out for blood. Garm and I tangled a while back. I almost had him, but then -" He paused, eyes cutting away from hers. "And Tarak -" Garrus shook his head as his hands clenched rhythmically on his rifle. Now that he had looked at her once, he couldn't seem to stop. "Tarak still hasn't gotten over our visit."

 _Ten bodies, two rows_. "So they've got personal business with you." She nodded back toward the balcony. "Better stay up here, then. You can put out a lot of damage from that spot if anyone gets ambitious."

Garrus gave her another look that was torn between bewilderment and terrible exhilaration. "And you can do what you do best," he said. "They won't know what hit them."

"Never saw me coming, right?" The tease in her voice fell short, tumbling down into the chasm between them. A far-off explosion vibrated up through her feet.

Garrus froze, eyes darting around the room, as another, closer explosion came from beneath them.

"Damn," he said. His breathing went ragged. "They had to use their brains eventually."

"Talk to me, Garrus."

"The tunnels below the base are - were - rigged with proximity charges. Sounds like the mercs are using them to blow their way into the base."

Her curiosity nearly got the better of her as she caught the layers behind the  _were_ , but she strangled it.  _Priorities, Shepard. Get out alive, and you'll be able to chase him down for answers on the_ Normandy _._

In emphasis, another explosion rattled up through the base. A fight on two fronts -

 _Three fronts_ , she thought, remembering the gunship. She bit the inside of her lip hard enough to taste blood. Jacob and Miranda waited for her orders, their faces cool professional masks. Garrus kept trying not to look at her.

"All right," she said. "They're going to pull out all the tricks for us, now that they know Archangel has some friends. We've got two vantage points from here. Jacob, Miranda I want you covering the inside of the base from that wall. We're about to have a lot of company from downstairs. And Garrus - you stay where you are."

_Four people, to hold off over a hundred mercs. I started the day with just one suicide mission on my mind._

Any more thought on the subject shattered when the next explosion rattled up through her legs. "They're almost in. Check your clips." She could hear the hisses and shrieks of the vorcha, and somewhere, not far behind, the bellow of a krogan. "Miranda, Jacob, keep that stairway clear. I'm going to need it in a few minutes."

"Commander?" Miranda had her pistol out, the SMG stowed in its holster. "Commander, what are you doing?"

Shepard felt Garrus' eyes on her. "Thinning the herd." She passed him on her way to the balcony, eyes resolutely ahead. If she looked at him now, she'd never be able to keep her hands steady.

She swung up onto the railing. The wave danced just within reach; when she grasped it, sour spit filled her mouth. Almost ready. Her body quivered, ready to leap, but she held herself still until a slender figure leapt over the barricade. The Eclipse symbol on the front of its armor was just visible from her position.

"Hello, Jaroth," she murmured. The first swell of dark energy flooded her nerves. Shepard hit the Charge and threw herself through the air, away from Garrus, away from the way he gripped his rifle, away from how she couldn't bear the way he flinched from her and how it felt like a stone lodged in her throat.

Time to dance.


	25. Chapter 25

" _You're the human equivalent of a shotgun, Shepard. Inelegant, but effective."_

Anderson's words - words he'd spoken minutes after she returned from her first mission under his command - had lost none of their sting, but she learned to use it. Everything could be a tool: anger, pain, doubt.

Her body was a tool.

Shepard slammed back into the world a few feet from Jaroth. The impact blew him onto his back, his armor split from neck to belly. He clawed at the air as he tried to rise.

She unholstered her shotgun. Three more mercs jumped the barricade, too far away for their shots to do more than make her barriers shiver.

"You," Jaroth groaned. "I should've known when the mechs overloaded. Too many damn questions. Didn't care about credits."

Shepard reloaded.  _Kid tech. "_ You should be nicer to your recruits," she said. She brought up her shotgun, her arms heavy with a dreamy, unfamiliar rage, and aimed for his head.

Before she could fire, a shot sizzled against her barriers as it passed over her right shoulder. It tore off the left half of Jaroth's face and spattered blood across the front of her armor.

"Dammit, Garrus!" she yelled. The first groups of mercs moved into range, trying to box her in; with the energy coiled in her hands, she blasted them off the side of the bridge.

"I owed him," said Garrus, in his new, flat voice.

"A little warning would have been nice!"

He didn't answer, but a second shot rang out and caught an engineer as she tried to jump the barricade. The mercs kept coming.

Shepard hit the Charge again. And again. Sweat ran into her eyes. Her amp whined dangerously at the base of her skull, where the warning pinprick of a headache had begun.

"Shepard, get out of my line of sight! I can't aim with you all over the place!"

_Get used to it, Garrus, because this is me now. In your way._

Bitterness was a tool, too. It made her fast. It made her graceful. She darted across the battlefield, twisting the bitter coil in her gut into something usable. Garrus' shots grazed her barriers, but she kept moving. She couldn't stop. Movement was the only thing that saved her.

Tali, turning away.  _Use it._ The body that only felt like it belonged to her when it was fighting.  _Use it._ The thing in her room, spilling warnings in its cracked voice.  _Use it._

Garrus, flinching from her. Garrus, ready to fight until he died. Garrus, alone.

_Use it._

Her arms burned with muscle fatigue. So far, none of the Eclipse had tried to disable her hands. One of the few benefits of fighting other biotics was their delicacy about certain body parts. They preserved what was precious to them. Shepard wasn't delicate. In the pauses as her amp buzzed and thrummed while it recharged, she fired low and wide, aiming for hands and knees. Garrus finished them off, each shot perfectly timed as she rolled into cover.

_See? We can work together._

She kept quiet. Words meant nothing. Only action. She stayed still long enough to snap off another Shockwave and rolled to the side, dodging return fire that never came.

"Garrus?" His pause lasted long enough to worry her. "Garrus, how're we looking?"

"We're clear," he replied, like every word was sand in his mouth.

"Miranda?"

"We're holding them, Commander, but if you plan on making your entrance, you need to do it now." Shepard rolled her shoulders. She could hear the shrieks of the vorcha, and the low bellow of a krogan.

"Copy that. Any sign of the Blue Suns?"

"None," said Miranda. "Commander -"

Shepard's teeth dug into her lip. "I heard you Miranda. Heading into the base." She sprinted to the end of the bridge, only slowing when she slipped through the doors. Silently, she made her way to the end of the entry hallway and crouched against the doorframe. Two vorcha hid behind a low shelf, reloading thermal clips with their backs to her. She tested her amp and winced. She had four, maybe five good bursts left. Anything beyond that and she'd start hemorraghing.

She eased out of cover to give herself a clear line of sight. It hurt to pull the energy down into her arms, and the Shockwave scalded the skin on her palms as she aimed. She'd have a fever in a few minutes.

 _Use it_ , she told herself.  _Anything's a tool if you work hard enough._

She flung the Shockwave across the room. It ripped through the pair of vorcha and knocked one of the krogan off his feet. Only one vorcha stood between her and the stairs and for that, she could -

"Charging!" she screamed, and used the pain in her hands to throw herself forward. She staggered when she re-entered, and nearly tripped over the body of the vorcha. The impact had almost broken it in two.

"Commander?" Miranda's voice echoed under her skin.

Shepard winced as the threat of a headache turned into an attack. "I'm fine," she said. "On my way." She started to run, but stumbled on a loose tile and fell against the bannister.

"Shepard!" The gunfire from Miranda's position paused.

_She used my name. Good to know she cares._

"Focus!" she shouted. "Keep that path behind me clear!"

The gunfire started again, just in time. Two more vorcha - how were there so many? - had started for the stairs while Shepard steadied herself, and made it within three feet of her position before Jacob hit them with a Throw.

Shepard shoved herself up and kept running, shotgun braced against her hip. At the top of the stairs, she dropped behind the railing.  _Switch clip, catch breath, focus._ She gave herself three seconds, ears straining for any warning noises behind her, and peered down the hall toward the balcony.

 _Garm_.

She'd only seen him at a distance before, but there was no mistaking the armo r, or the sweet-sharp smell of his biotics, soured by his sweat. Garrus had given no details of their fight, but that omission told her enough. It had been bad, bad enough to kill the words in Garrus' mouth.

There was no reason why the sight of Garm should have filled her with so much anger, but it rose in her like a spear until her vision blurred. He had his back to her as he stalked toward Archangel - toward Garrus.

Moving as silently as her armor allowed, Shepard stepped out of cover and into the center of the hallway.

_One shot to take down his barriers, switch to incendiary ammo for his armor, and -_

Her planning died when she focused just beyond Garm, where a dark flicker reformed itself into a familiar shape.

The black-haired woman stood beside Garm, just outside the doorway, watching Shepard. Her head dipped in a slow arc under the tangle of her hair, white eyes glowing against dark skin.

Shepard fired twice. The first shot went wild, the second took down Garm's barriers. Her shotgun dug into her hip on the recoil, hard enough to bruise through her armor. A seam caught at her skin, and she felt the tear run down her thigh, twisting inward. Garm began to turn, lips curled back from his teeth, and a blue halo flared around him.

 _Medi-gel, get to the medi-gel_. Her mind refused to focus, too distracted by pain to obey, but her hands moved to the pouch at her waist on instinct. She plugged a pack into her suit's and waited for the cool relief.

"Shepard," said the woman. "Shepard,  _move."_

"I'm moving, dammit!" she screamed. The adrenalin in her system made her nauseous. "What the hell else do you want?" The world lurched sideways, every thought unmoored and tangled. When Shepard looked down at her hands, they gleamed wetly in the hallway lights, covered in blue blood.

She blinked. The blood vanished.

"Move!" yelled the woman. Her voice ground against Shepard's skin like grains of sand, and spiraled upward into a cry. Shepard didn't look back; she threw herself into the hallway and crouched, shotgun aimed for Garm's back.

Garm had finished his turn, and faced her with a smile. She knew how she looked: small and pale, trembling in her armor. An easy target - but fear was just another tool.

She stayed rooted in place as Garm charged her. The hallway shook with his footsteps, but she held herself still, even as her body struggled against her control. The second before Garm collided with her, she whirled to the side and crouched against the wall. He pounded past her, unsteady as he sped toward the top of the stairs. She slammed in the incendiary pack and fired. His armor chipped and peeled away, some of it blowing back to cut the exposed skin on her face and neck. She shielded her eyes, but one of the pieces buried itself just above her left eye. She swiped the blood and sweat away, in time to see Garm swing back around.

He was a two-thousand-pound berserker in armor who stank of blood, but she was Commander Shepard. She'd been pulled out of death's mouth. What threat could a krogan offer?

She laughed, and took her eyes off Garm for a split second, long enough for him to charge her. At the edge of her hearing, Miranda called her name, and the gunshots from the balcony paused for the second time. In the second before Garm hit her, she jumped, legs bent, and smashed her feet into his chest. The impact only staggered him for a moment, but Shepard flew backwards to hit the floor shoulders-first. She lost her breath as her ribs strained, but she caught herself and leveraged her momentum to push herself upright.

The move would have been a terrible choice if she hadn't still been healing, if she hadn't been in full armor, if she hadn't been fighting a  _goddamn krogan._ The leap bowed her spine, almost folded her in half, and something snapped on the right side of her ribcage as one of the too-soft bones - maybe more than one - broke.

She cried out before she could stop herself and jammed her fist against her mouth. Garm straightened, teeth bared, and back up to start another charge.

The gunfire hadn't started up again. Shepard chanced a glance back into the room, but all she saw was the edge of a bookshelf.

"Stay in it!" she yelled. "Keep the base and the bridge clear!" She shoved another medi-gel pack into the port on her armor as she swung back into cover. Almost two seconds went by before the medi-gel slid into her bloodstream and numbed the burning ache in her ribs. She pivoted back into the hallway, a laugh bubbling up within her as the adrenalin hit her again.

Joy - in her body, in its abilities, in every movement it made - flooded her, cool and steadying. It wasn't just a tool: it was her ally. When Garm ran at her again, she pulled the last bolt of energy down from her amp, through her aching arms, and slammed him into the ceiling. Her amp fired a last, warning burst, and went quiet at the back of her head.

She'd have to finish it the hard way.

Someone shouted behind her, but the words disappeared under the roar of her bloodstream. She ran down the hallway, shotgun raised high, and brought the barrel down into Garm's open mouth. He swiped at her legs to knock her off balance; she came down hard on her left knee and fell forward. Her shotgun jammed against the soft flesh at the back of Garm's throat.

 _Enough playing,_ she screamed at herself.  _Finish it!_

Garm's hands scrabbled at the barrel of her shotgun. He gagged around the metal. The sound made Shepard's spine tighten; the sourceless rage bellowed in her head, and the edges of the hole shivered.

"Try and regenerate," she shouted. Garm's eyes went wide. " _Try!"_  She fired.

Garm's legs spasmed as his primary nervous system crashed. The secondary system tried to take over, but Shepard fired again, and the regenerating nerves unraveled. Steaming blood spilled out of the hole in the back of his head. She fired a last shot, just to be sure, even though Garm's eyes had gone watery and unfocused, and his breathing had stopped.

She rose unsteadily, leaning on her shotgun for support. The tear on her thigh ached dully under the medi-gel's haze. Her hands felt like she'd grabbed a steam pipe, her ribs ached when she inhaled, but the injuries she could feel didn't worry her as much as the ones she hadn't felt yet. Once the medi-gel and adrenalin faded, she'd be in bad shape.

No time to rest; they still had the Blue Suns and an exit to worry about. Her feet carried her toward the balcony.

The woman was gone.

_Figures._

Shepard glanced at her hands. Nothing but red blood - hers and Garm's - covered them. She passed Jacob and Miranda, registering their blank incredulity, and kept her eyes on Garrus.  _Keep walking. Breathe it out._

"Garm's down," said Shepard. She winced at the shrapnel in her face, and pulled out the piece above her eye. A trickle of blood dripped over her brow. She brushed it away. "How're we looking?"

"The bridge is clear. And now Garm and Jaroth are dead. Maybe it's not such a bad day..." He turned around slowly, still avoiding looking at her, but at the last moment his gaze fell on her face. In two quick steps he crossed the room to stand in front of her, eyes intent, with no regard for her personal space. She didn't care.

"Spirits," he breathed. The worry in his voice hit her like a narcotic. She closed her eyes, concentrating on his warmth in front of her. "Shepard, are you all right?"

She opened her eyes and nodded. "I'm fine. Doesn't look it, but I'm fine." A twinge in her ribs called her a liar. "I'll be better when we get back to the ship. Burned out my amp, so you won't have to worry about any more charging for a while."

Garrus made a soft noise, somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. A moment later, the stiffness in his posture melted away. His head dropped between his shoulders, until his forehead brushed her temple.

 _Oh thank God_ , she thought, too relieved to question the gesture. She reached up and touched his face with the tips of her fingers, murmuring his name. He pressed closer, his breathing shallow and fast.

"What happened to you?" she whispered, her mouth almost touching his mandible. He made the noise again. "Garrus, it's going to be okay. I've..."

Before she could finish, Garrus pulled back, face shuttered. Shepard closed her eyes and forced herself to straighten and turn away. When she glanced at her teammates, Jacob pointedly looked elsewhere, but Miranda met Shepard's eyes without any expression beyond a raised eyebrow. Shepard stared back until Miranda looked away.

 _Nothing to see here._ Her throat ached again, as the urge to pull Garrus back moved through her.  _Nothing at all._

"I say we push," she said. "We've only got the Blue Suns to deal with, and I want out of here before they start whatever's kept them out of the fight so far. Garrus?"

He startled a little at the sound of his name, but he nodded. "Now's as good a time as any, but Blue Suns still have the most troops. And there's that gunship - unless you had your fun with that too." His careful, empty voice forced the joke flat. If Shepard had any energy to spare, she would have winced away from it.

"I wouldn't call it fun," she said. "But the gunship won't last against a couple hits from this guy." She patted the missile launcher at her back.

"Cathka?"

"I made him take a break."

"Still terrifying, Shepard." Garrus gave her a dry laugh. The silence swelled around them. Miranda sighed somewhere in the distance. His mandibles moved, his hungry stare at odds with his cold body language, but he shut away whatever he was going to say.

Shepard took a step away from Garrus, and schooled her face into her professional mask. Comfort would be in short supply, but she didn't have the luxury of pursuing it, especially not from Garrus. The step back was insurance, a guarantee her unruly body wouldn't reach out to him again.

"Everyone, gear up. Check your clips and shield strength." She saw a slight movement at the other end of the room, almost lost in a cluster of shadows.

 _Not that thing again_ , she prayed, and zoomed in her visor's HUD with a double blink. A bar of dusty light caught the suggestion of a blue and white pattern as a body swung into the room. Garrus saw it a moment after she did.

"They're rappelling down the walls! Get down!" He made a short gesture, like he wanted to shove her away before he spun back into cover against the balcony.

The first shots pinged against her barriers as she dropped behind a couch. The jagged point of her broken rib dug into her lung, and pain too deep to be used blanked out the room.  _So much for being a vanguard_ , she thought, and coughed out a laugh.

"Shepard!"

She blinked. Garrus peered at her around the edge of the couch, mandibles tight. She waved him back, cradling her ribs.  _I'm fine,_  she mouthed. His gaze sharpened.

 _Stay where you are, idiot. Keep shooting!_ She pushed herself up and pushed her last incendiary pack into her shotgun with shaking fingers. The moment before she turned to fire, a low, insistent whine made the air vibrate around her as an engine rolled over and woke up.

"Gunship!" she gasped. "Gunsh-" Her voice faded as a search light flooded the room. She dropped her shotgun with a clatter and fumbled for the missile launcher. The gunship filled the window, and Garrus rose to meet it.

"No!" She balanced the missile launcher on her knee to compensate for her unsteady hands and aimed. "Garrus, get  _down!"_

_Ten bodies, two rows._

The gunship fired a long liquid burst, sun-hot, and for a horrible, fragile moment, Garrus disappeared in a white flare. Somewhere, Tarak laughed, and the sticky black rage coated the inside of Shepard's head. She couldn't get to Garrus, but -

The missile launcher kicked back, and the recoil slammed its base into her ribs. The soft bones shattered under the pressure, but she held the trigger down until it choked, empty.

The gunship reared back, but the last missile smashed through the windshield, and ignited in a greedy blast that sucked the oxygen out of her lungs. Miranda screamed behind her as the gunship broke apart, the flames swallowing Tarak and his revenge in seconds.

 _It's done_ , she thought. The pain tried to overwhelm her, but it was her tool again. She could hold out a little longer. Her fingers twitched around the trigger, and the movement made the blistered skin on her palms threaten to rip. She shoved the missile launcher away, rolled to her hands and knees, and started to crawl toward the still body slumped against the wall. Something sticky coated her hands. Even before she looked down, she knew what it was.

Blue blood. And Garrus - Garrus didn't answer when she gasped his name.

"Garrus - oh god, we're going to get you out -"

_Hold on. I've got you._

Time slid away from Shepard in a watery rush. She remembered shouting at Miranda, someone pressing medi-gel packs into her waiting hand, and the sickly-sweet smell of melted armor meeting skin.

She remembered her hands moving over Garrus' armor without any input from her brain, pulling the broken pieces away and trying to find where the blood,  _all the goddamn blood_ , was coming from.

And she remembered him sucking in a thick, clotted breath, his left eye bleary and dazed under his visor. His other eye - the right side of his face -

She wished she hadn't looked.

Miranda pulled her up, gentle but insistent, when Chakwas appeared at the door. Shepard shoved her back, leaving sticky blue handprints on Miranda's shoulders. Chakwas shouted something at Miranda, pointing at Shepard, but the words turned garbled and loose.

"Your translators are broken," said Shepard. Her knees blossomed in twin bursts of pain. When she looked down, she saw she was kneeling again, without remembering moving. Chakwas yelled something else, still incomprehensible, her face white except for two splotches of red high on her cheeks.

"How is he, doctor?" asked Shepard. "His face - his face is  _gone_. You have to fix him." She inhaled, and cried out when a jagged point stabbed into her lung. The right side of her chest felt deflated and tight all at once. "Garrus -"

Chakwas made a slashing gesture in the air. Miranda's arms looped under Shepard's and yanked her upward. Shepard tried to scream as the movement made her ribs press inward, but all the air had left her lungs. Black stains circled the edge of her vision, and Chakwas' voice fell into the distance.

"Garrus," she gasped. His hand twitched on the ground, clenching and unclenching endlessly, as the dark closed over her.


	26. Chapter 26

Shepard woke to white tiles and the smell of medi-gel for the second time, and waited, eyes closed, for the explosions and screaming to start. All stayed cool and silent outside of her head, even after her slow count to fifty; when the world tried to lurch sideways, she held her breath and opened her eyes.

_I'm not falling. I'm alive. I can breathe._

She blinked at the overhead lights and waited for her body to separate the individual agonies: chest, leg, arm, amp. Even after the beating she had taken, it took longer than she expected to inventory everything. She traced the new scar that ran the length of her thigh, and prodded her amp. It crackled at the contact and her fingertip went numb for a half-second - a good sign. The entire right side of her chest prickled and itched.  _At least I slept through the ossification injections,_  she thought, and pushed up on her elbows.

_I slept._

The medbay was empty except for her, privacy curtains drawn and locked in place. Chakwas, her staff - all gone.

Her pulse fluttered wildly in her throat. The thought that she had  _slept_  through -

She slumped back to the bed, covering her mouth with shaking fingers.

_His face was_ gone _, and he was barely breathing before you passed out. So much for a rescue. You practically let him walk into Tarak's shot._

She curled on her side. Her ribs ached as she reached for the comm interface set into the wall.

"Anyone out there?" she asked. Her voice sounded like it had to drag itself through gravel before it made it out of her mouth.

"Ah, Commander, you're awake. I'll be right in." The door to the medbay opened before Chakwas finished speaking. "You weren't supposed to be awake for another two hours, but I see that I must readjust sedative levels to compensate for your implants. Stay still. I want to run a few diagnostics."

Shepard closed her eyes. Chakwas, she knew from experience, was an expert at letting nothing slip through vocal cues. If she wanted to know anything, she would have to find out by asking.

"How's Garrus?" The present tense felt fragile in her mouth, a glass eggshell for her hope. "He was in bad shape on Omega."

Chakwas bent over the bed. The orange glow of her omni-tool filtered through Shepard's eyelids. "Garrus is fine, Commander," she said. "Relatively speaking."

Shepard held her body language still and silent. She opened her eyes slowly. Even that much movement hurt. "Relatively speaking?"

"He took a hit that should have killed him. I repaired what I could with cybernetic implants, but -" Chakwas' hand made a graceful arabesque over Shepard's head. The motion made her dizzy, and she turned away, swallowing hard.

"But he's not here," she said, her voice cracking on every word. Her throat felt dry enough to be used as kindling.  _Oh no, don't think about fire, Shepard._

"As soon as he could sit up, he insisted on leaving." A silent comment about  _turian stoicism_ lay underneath Chakwas' cool professionalism.

"Sounds like Garrus."

"Sounds like  _you_ , Commander. Back among the living for less than a week, and you've managed to make the damage you took fighting Saren look like a papercut. Three broken ribs, a punctured lung, a concussion - not to mention the mess you made of your amp. It took me almost an hour to remove it."

"There was a krogan."

"Of course there was," said Chakwas. "Well, your implants seem to have come through fairly unscathed. Yet another Shepard miracle. And the skin weave is integrating nicely with the epidermis."

"The skin weave -" Shepard reached up to touch her face. Her skin felt cool and smooth, like porcelain. She trailed her hand over her neck, under her robe and down between her breasts. The new scars remained in place, but the skin surrounding them was slick as glass. "Doctor, what the hell?"

Chakwas' mouth flattened into a thin white line. "Miranda insisted I keep you sedated until she was able to assess the extent of the damage to your implants."

"And you  _listened_ to her?" Shepard pushed away Chawkas' hand and sat up. Her ribs creaked a warning as she swung her legs over the side of the bed. "How long was I out?"

"Two days," said Chakwas carefully. She flinched when Shepard slammed her fist against the side of the bed.

"Two  _days?_ " She felt like laughing, and strangled the urge. If she started to laugh, she might not be able to stop. "God. Do I even want to ask what she did? My skin feels - "

_Dead._

"Miranda was notably reluctant to share information about your implants. It is my understanding that she applied an experimental skin weave, in order to strengthen and replenish your epidermis." Chakwas gave Shepard an encouraging smile. "In time, your skin will feel normal again."

_When? Weeks? Months? The rest of my life, however long this second one is?_  Shepard folded her arms under her breasts, then dropped her hands. She didn't want to touch her bare skin. No wonder Garrus looked at her like she was half-alive. Miranda stitched her body back together, but not without leaving parts of her behind. Whatever had been missing, Cerberus replaced with tech. And it wasn't like she could sweep her own body for bugs.

She shook her hair over her face and pushed her disgust down, out of sight. Whatever Cerberus thought, they didn't own her.

"Can I get some real clothes, doctor? It's a little cold to be sitting around in a robe without a back."

Chakwas narrowed her eyes, but passed Shepard the bundle of her casual clothes without comment. Shepard waited to strip until Chakwas turned away, then pulled on the underwear and leggings, shuddering whenever she felt the slick surface of the weave against her fingers. Her new skin gleamed under the harsh lighting, like marble, and felt as welcoming. She slid her bra straps up her arms, pausing when her fingers brushed over the marks on her shoulders.

"Couldn't get rid of those, I guess," she murmured, and traced them with the tip of a finger. Feeling smug over this small failure of Miranda's was petty - more than petty, it was beneath her - but she let herself wallow in the feeling. It was a better emotion than self-pity.

"Those marks?" said Chakwas. "They gave Miranda  _fits_. No matter what she tried, they wouldn't go away." Chakwas sounded rather pleased with the idea of Miranda's failure too, but her tone turned serious. "I don't remember seeing them on the old  _Normandy_ , and I saw you injured often enough to have noticed them."

Shepard zipped her suit. "Probably just leftovers from my tenure as Frankenstein's monster. They'll fade." She scraped her hair back from her face and knotted it over her amp. "Everything in order, doctor?"

"For someone who took on a krogan biotic singlehandedly, you're quite well." Chakwas' unspoken  _and for someone who was dead a week ago_  rang in the air. "Commander, where are you going?"

"To clear the air with my XO," Shepard said over her shoulder. She tugged her gloves tight against her fingers. There wasn't a place on her body where she could feel her own skin.

Before Chakwas could call her back, she stepped out of medbay and into the mess. Two Cerberus crewmen nodded at her over their lunches as she passed and started to rise. She waved them back.

At the edge of her vision, the door to the main battery stayed resolutely closed.

_Give it time_ , she told herself. Garrus had always been private; blundering in on his grief to apologize would only pull them farther apart. But the memory of his breath at her ear made her shiver, and she walled off the urge to see him, closed it behind her professional mask.

The hole in her head, silent for the past two days, shuddered and rippled. She kept her eyes on Miranda's office and kept walking, away from the main battery.

***

Miranda looked up when the door breezed open. She kept typing, but she gave Shepard a tight, cordial smile.

"Ah, Commander. You're awake."

"I am," said Shepard, bright as zircon, noting the regression back to 'Commander'. "I wanted to see how you were doing."

Miranda frowned. "I assure you, I'm fine, Commander. I was barely injured."

"Still, it must be hard for you, getting used to the fact that there's a  _person_  living inside your science project now."

"I beg your pardon?"

Shepard forced herself to smile against the resistance of her new skin. She knew she looked ghastly: too many teeth on display, scars stretched and puckered. "I know you spent two years of your life bringing me back, but I want to make this clear: your days of complete autonomy are done."

"I'm not sure those days  _should_ be done," said Miranda, her smile as poisonous as Shepard's.

Shepard's smile dropped away. "Say that again," she said.

"You're reckless," Miranda began. "Reckless, unpredictable, inelegant -"

Shepard cut Miranda off with a shake of her head. "Nothing you didn't already know." She clasped her hands behind her back and drew up her spine. "None of that seemed to give your Illusive Man any qualms."

"You endangered us and your  _friend_ ," Miranda added, with just a hint of a sneer, "with your attempts at heroics. Oh, you looked very dashing, Charging off the balcony, but I'm impressed with results, not show-offs."

"I thought you were an expert on all things Shepard," Shepard spat. "' _Black, three sugars?_ ' If you didn't like my combat style, why not just install a control chip while you were rebuilding me?"

For an instant, Miranda froze. Her fingers finally went still over her keyboard.

"Ah," said Shepard. Her lips felt dry and ashy. She forced them into another stiff smile. This time, Miranda recoiled from it. "Whose idea was that? Yours?"

Miranda nodded. To her credit, her eyes never left Shepard's.

"Well, points for honesty. What made you change your mind?"

"The Illusive Man." Miranda regained a little more poise with each word, her voice clipped and precise once again. "He wanted you exactly as you were, not a single change." Her mouth twitched in a rueful smile. "Though there was at least one change we couldn't help. Besides the shoulders, that is, though they hardly register against your inadvertent -  _conversion._ "

"I can't say I mind it," said Shepard. The sensation of freefall, sweet and airless, trembled in her hands. "My instructors always said I had the personality of a vanguard. I suppose I've come full circle."

Shepard paused. "The crew will suffer if their commander and XO are at each other's throats," she said. Miranda nodded and started to reply, then apparently thought better of it. "Whatever you may think of me and my decisions, I'm not unreasonable. If you have an issue, we'll deal with it - between us. But if your response to something you don't like is to knock me out and play god, then we'll have business."

Miranda lifted her chin. "I assure you, Commander, my actions were for your benefit. I'm not driven by petty grudges. You were hardly finished when I was forced to wake you, and I am the only person on this ship who is qualified to assess the state of your implants."

Shepard wondered briefly how long it had been since Miranda had heard the smug arrogance in her own voice. She held back a sigh.  _"_ Expertise aside, Miranda, you have no right to make unilateral decisions about my body. Not anymore." Shepard stepped forward until her legs hit the desk, silently gratified when Miranda didn't back away. "Is that understood? If there's a problem, I have no issue letting you examine me and make suggestions. But you  _will not_  act without my consent, or without Chakwas' involvement." Miranda sneered a little at that, like Shepard expected, but didn't offer a protest. "You'll send her everything you've got on my recovery and rehabilitation. Everything, not just what you feel like sharing."

_I want someone who isn't a Cerberus foot soldier to know what's been installed in my body. No surprises._

She took a step back from the desk. "I hope that was clear enough. I don't like having to repeat myself. Understood?"

Miranda stared at Shepard, dislike warring with guarded respect. "Understood, Commander," she said, after a long pause.

"Good. As you were." Shepard turned for the door, but glanced over her shoulder at Miranda before it opened. The woman hadn't started typing again, and looked a little stunned. "And Miranda?"

The sound of her name made Miranda look up. "Commander?"

"Don't worry about this coming back to bite you in the ass, unless you make the same mistake. I'm not driven by petty grudges either."

On her way out, she thought she saw Miranda trying to fight a smile, and failing.

***

The mess was empty when Shepard stepped out of Miranda's office. . Even the cook had disappeared, off on some other errand. Chakwas had raised the privacy curtains in medbay; Shepard saw the smooth curve of her hair as the doctor bent over her terminal.

No one would see her if she went to the main battery - no one  _living._ EDI would see, but Shepard had a feeling that the AI would keep this secret, just like she kept the secret of the shadows in Shepard's cabin.

_Why does it have to be a secret? I'm checking on a friend._

That didn't stop her hand from shaking when she keyed the door. The lock chimed politely at her, and the display flashed red.

Locked.

Her omni-tool could override the lock; so could EDI, in a pinch. That wasn't the point.

Garrus had locked himself in the main battery as soon as he got out of medbay. He didn't want comfort or friends; he wanted solitude, and time to repair himself in private. Shepard recognized the closed door for what it really was: a wall, cracked and shattered, but still standing.

She could tear it down with a headlong charge and force her way inside. Part of her was sure Garrus expected it. She had always been a vanguard at heart.

On the edge of her hearing, she thought she heard him moving around the battery, talking in low tones. To his squad, perhaps. Her throat tightened.

"EDI?"

"Yes, Shepard?"

"Make sure no one disturbs Officer Vakarian for the next three hours." She pulled her hair out of its knot, yanking on the loose strands as they fell around her face. "Barring medical emergencies, no one goes in. The door stays locked."

"Of course, Shepard."

She took a reluctant step away. "Three hours," she said to the door. "Then I knock."

***

Two days in the medbay meant two days of missing information. Despite the ache in her leg, where the muscles were slow to heal, she started her rounds of the ship.

Zaeed had set up a little nest for himself on the engineering deck, where everything smelled faintly of grease and smoke.

"So you're still alive," he said, just enough of an accusation to make her flash her new, ghoulish smile at him. "Tarak's dead, I hear." He turned his head to the side and spat. "Good riddance. Galaxy's better with him melted into slag. Too bad your turian friend got his face melted off before you took out the slick bastard."

"Glad to see you've settled in," she said sweetly, refusing to be drawn out even as guilt coiled in her belly. "If there's anything you need, just ask Miranda."

Zaeed snickered and went back to ignoring Shepard, back against the wall, eyes on the floor.

Her thigh started to cramp while she checked in on the engineers. They bickered good-naturedly, as much for her amusement as their own, and ended with a request for small equipment upgrades. She agreed too quickly, if the surprise on their faces was any indication, and excused herself just before she started to limp.

The elevator between floors wasn't any faster than the one on the first  _Normandy._ She had almost two minutes to lean against the wall and work out the cramp before she made it up to the CIC. Her leg trembled when she put weight on it, but it would hold, so long as she didn't have to fight. She made her way to the cockpit with a deliberate lack of speed, discreetly favoring her leg and taking the chance to observe the Cerberus crew at work. No one glanced up or spoke to her, but she felt their gazes on her back as she passed by.

"Wow, Commander, you look like...well, you. Guess that says something about our relationship that I'm used to see you look like death warmed over." Joker cringed at her lack of expression. "Uh, sorry. Too soon?"

"When has good taste ever stopped you?" Shepard nodded at EDI's interface. "How're things up here?"

Joker's face tightened into a sour frown. " _Ship. Cancer,_ " he hissed.

EDI's interface flickered next to Joker. "My auditory sensors are more than capable of picking up your voice, regardless of decibel level, Mr. Moreau."

Shepard sighed. She wanted to apologize to EDI, but she sensed once she started, she would never stop.

Joker saved her from trying with a sideways, deliberate look. "Heard Garrus is doing okay," he said, too neutral. A second later, the facade cracked. "Did they take the stick out of his ass? 'Cause that was gonna need major surgery."

"Joker," said Shepard, with a hint of a warning.

"All right, all right." He threw up his hands. "Retracted."

"Good plan. Anything else I should know?"

"Don't you have a yeoman for that, Commander?"

She gave him her stiff, ghoulish smile. "Why ask her when I can ask  _you_ , and get a side helping of insubordination?"

Joker laughed, a bit embarrassed, and tugged his cap down over his eyes. "Well, now that you mention it, you should check out the tech lab."

"And that's because?"

"You'll see." He turned back to his console. "Wouldn't want to ruin the surprise."

"Insubordinate." She sighed, loud enough for Joker to hear, and turned back to make her way to the tech lab.

***

Joker's surprise turned out to be Mordin Solus.

"Hi," said Shepard, in a brief moment of uncertainty.  _I'm going to kill Joker._

"Shepard! Excellent! Wanted to visit in medbay. Extent of cybernetic implants fascinating. XO prevented me from entering. Stayed up here instead, wonderful lab set-up. Already began work on counter-measure."

"Didn't you have a plague to deal with?" she asked, yearning for coffee.

"Simple enough to create cure. Finished by the time you arrived on Omega." Mordin's hands never stopped moving. "Challenge presented by vorcha and krogan in the environmental controls." He looked up and smiled at her. "Not much of a challenge, in the end. Used tripwires set by another group. Not sure who. Still, useful."

"Impressive," she said, unable to keep from smiling back. "But I've got to ask - how are you here? Did Miranda go get you?"

Mordin's hands waved the question away. "No, no. Heard you were looking for me. Also heard you were injured in fight to retrieve Archangel. Once work with plague was finished, came to see why."

"Let me guess. Aria told you?" Shepard gritted her teeth when Mordin nodded. "Wonderful."

"Said it was her way of thanking you for an evening's entertainment." Mordin sniffed. "And for a datapad. Not sure what she meant. Don't care."

Shepard relaxed. Owing Aria a favor wasn't the absolute last thing she wanted, but damn close. She made a note to find a way to discreetly thank Miranda for remembering the datapad.

"Well, I'm glad to have you aboard, Dr. Solus." She held out her hand. Mordin stared at it with open fascination before shaking it, looking delighted with the custom.

"Mordin, please. Happy to be here. Though strange, to see you alive." He sniffed again. "Must retract statement to Archangel."

"You know Archangel - Garrus?" The pieces slotted together. She nodded. "Makes sense. Vigilantes tend to get pretty banged up. What statement do you have to retract?"

Mordin bent over his terminal again. "Told him to let go of sentimental attachment. Dead is dead, no coming back. Proof hypothesis was wrong standing in front of me."

"Ah," said Shepard. The words s _entimental attachment_ clattered in her head; for no reason at all, her heart clenched.

Mordin nodded as if she'd said something intelligent. "Yes. Now, must get back to work. Ready when you are."

"Welcome aboard," Shepard said, utterly bemused as her pulse kept its quickstep rhythm.

***

The door of the main battery was still locked when the three hours were over. Shepard ignored the impulse to override the lock on the door, and opened a comm channel.

"Garrus? It's Shepard."

Static crackled from the other end of the comms while she waited.

"Garrus?"

The door opened on the dim interior of the main battery. A warm breath of humid, ozone-scented air greeted as she stepped inside. She let herself smile; of course Garrus would choose this as his space. How many times had he complained good-naturedly about the sleeping pods being too cool for turians? The main battery felt tropical by comparison.

He stood over the main console with his back to the door.

_Don't hover_ , Shepard told herself.  _Talk to him._  The shattered collar of his armor made her stomach twist. How close he'd been - how close  _she'd_ been.

"Already hard at work, Garrus?"

"It had to be done." He shrugged without turning around. "Need me for something?"

Shepard took another step into the battery. The doors shut with a whisper behind her. "Just wanted to check on you." Garrus said nothing; she pushed a little further. "Figured you'd have something to say about Cerberus, if not about my miraculous resurrection."

Garrus' shoulders slumped. "I don't know what to say about - about  _that,_ but Cerberus? It worries me, Shepard." His hands stilled on the console; she could barely see them from where she stood, but she caught the clench and release of his fingers. "I'm worried about  _you_. All those sick experiments. I never thought we'd be working for them."

"We're  _not_  working for them," she blazed. Garrus half-turned, almost looking at her before he faced his console again. How was she supposed to talk to him if he wouldn't  _look_  at her? "They brought me back, but you know me better than to think I'd let some misplaced sense of debt keep me tied to them without any other reason."

Garrus nodded. Shepard bit down on a yell, anything to get him to turn around.

"I hate that it's Cerberus," she said, relieved beyond telling that she could finally admit it. She straightened her spine. "But right now, they're the only ones who are listening." She gave his back a tight, rueful smile, the best her skin would allow. "Besides, you're here. What could go wrong?"

Garrus let out an almost-laugh. "Couldn't leave me out of this trip into hell, could you?"

The bitter salt taste of adrenalin hit the back of her tongue. He hadn't refused her. One step forward. "Looks like I pulled you out of one, Garrus."

He shivered. "Yeah." He sighed, weary and lost. His hands dropped to his sides, fingers curled into the palms. "You could say that."

"What happened?"

Garrus sucked in a deep breath. On the exhale, he turned around to face her. She met his eyes without flinching, but the guilt in her gut knotted tight as she took in his face. The shattered collar of his armor Raw purple gouges trailed from under the bandage. "I let my feelings get in the way of my better judgment."

_Lots of that going around._  Faint light blinked under his bandage. "You want to talk about it?"

Garrus shook his head in a quick, convulsive jerk. Regret stung her, just a second too late, and she closed her eyes, her mouth twisting. When she looked at Garrus again, his gaze held hers, an echo of the quiet hunger flashing through them before disappearing.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Forget I asked. Just - you know I'm here if you ever need to, right?" Reaching out to him had the potential to backfire, but she did it anyways, and brushed her hand over his. His fingers tightened on hers briefly as he nodded.

"Whatever else is going on," Shepard said, even though laying herself bare in the face of his silence felt like twisting a knife in her side, "I'm glad you're here, Garrus." She let go of everything else she wanted to say -  _thank you for not saying anything about my face, thank you for staying_  - and pulled her hand away. Garrus turned around without another word and started typing.

Shepard watched his back; she wanted to reach out again and pull him back, but his armor's broken edges offered a silent reproach.  _Two years,_  it said;  _you were gone for two years. People moved on. Whatever you hoped for is dead, and no one can bring it back._

She wanted to be selfish, as purely as a child, and hide her face in the curve of his cowl. The idea made her flush, hot enough for her skin to feel alive again.

_Enough!_

She could forgive herself for anger or pettiness, but not this colossal selfishness. If nothing else, Garrus was still her friend, the only one on the ship she trusted to watch her back. So she left him without a goodbye, and let his silence and the now-familiar ache in her throat speak for them both.

***

Shepard got as far as the steps down into the mess before a jagged run of laughter tried to shove its way out past her teeth.

_The only way that could have gone worse is if he hadn't allowed me in at all. And that's still up for debate._

Trying to fill his silences, stumbling over her own words - she didn't know how long it had been since a situation left her so wrong-footed. She knew she lacked everything but the bare essentials of charm and tact, but struggling like this felt like a splinter, just under the skin.

She pulled her face into her neutral Commander mask, a little sick over how easily the stiffness in her skin made the transition, and forced her gaze outward, away from the heat she could still feel in her face and hands.

A few crew members nodded at her as she passed them - members of the night shift, relaxing over dinner before starting their work. She nodded back, sensing the shift in energy now that Miranda no longer officially oversaw the day's business.

Not that Shepard minded the change; she always loved this time - the twilight of the ship's day. On the first  _Normandy_ , when she wasn't off-ship chasing down geth outposts, she used the quiet for five minutes of silence, sitting alone in her cabin. She needed the time to recharge from the day. A day spent in full armor wore her out just as thoroughly as talking to people did, but given the choice, she'd chose the armor, every time.

Without the silence, she turned vicious, and sharpened her teeth on anyone within reach. Her good moods corroded and turned as brittle as rusted metal. She hadn't given herself the time until now, but as the  _Normandy_  ticked down into night mode, she knew she couldn't escape it.

On the elevator ride up to her cabin, she wished her leg would seize or one of her implants short-circuit, so she'd have to spend the night in medbay rather than on her own in her cabin. Just because the silence was necessary didn't mean she enjoyed sitting still and listening to the roar of her mind.

No luck. The elevator reached her cabin without any medical emergencies.

Shepard kicked her boots off at the door and stripped off her uniform. The clothes would stay where she dropped them until she summoned the energy to shove them into the laundry chute.

The light on her private terminal flashed; she pounced on it, hoping for a distraction, but all she found was a reminder to pick up the FBA couplings. Every other piece of mail had been answered, and nothing else required her immediate attention.

_No more excuses, Shepard. Time to run the diagnostic._   _Not that calling it that makes it any easier, or make you feel any more human._

She sat down on the edge of the bed and turned her gaze inward. The reentry never got easier; looking at herself,  _really_ looking, meant not being able to ignore anything. Her body was full of things she wished she never needed to see or consider: the implants tangled in cobwebs of nerves, her half-alive skin, and the way she felt Miranda's fingerprints - and therefore Cerberus' - crawl over her bones, sly and possessive.

And there, in the center of her head, the black hole: the crackling, hissing mystery sitting inside her brain. Ignoring it was by far the most attractive option, but she couldn't allow herself the luxury. She wouldn't put it past Cerberus to have installed some kind of insurance, in case she went off the rails.

But looking too closely at the emptiness - that had its own set of risks.

Ashley's voice floated toward her, husky from traveling so far.

"' _The darkness drops again, but now I know  
_ _That twenty centuries of stony sleep  
_ _Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle_.'"

" _You disagree with going after Saren, Chief?"_

" _No ma'am. Just not looking forward to what we'll find when we catch up with him."_

Sometimes being a human shotgun was an advantage. Shepard didn't care what she found or what she woke up. Two years asleep was long enough.

She closed her eyes and forced her way inside, down where her loneliness turned bitter and cold and even her best intentions curdled. She held out her hand, over and over, only to bring it back to her side, empty.

Fine _._ She took the strangled hope and pushed deeper, to the old doubts and grief: everything she used to drive her onward. The race to find Saren left her buffeted; losing Ash left her battered.

None of it left her  _broken_.

Fear would not break her now, especially fear of what was in her own head. She forced her way past the thick loathing of what she had become and faced the emptiness, her heart skidding in her chest.

The hole broke open with a howl. What spilled out was ice and wind, and the memory of

_falling._

" _Fuck!"_  Shepard grabbed her head in both hands, her skull creaking as it strained to hold what the hole spat out.

_I'm not falling. I_ fell.

She wrenched herself out of her head and forced her eyes open. Fear, sticky, insistent fear, tried to wrap around her spine, but she chased it away with a shaky, furious laugh.

So much for silence. If this was a Cerberus trick - and she wouldn't put it past them, to hide a trap in her dying memories - better to trigger it now than on a mission.

Shepard sighed. Her anger banked low, hot coals under ash. She would need it to stay warm where she was going.

It was time to see to the dead.

 


	27. Chapter 27

When Miranda set a mug of coffee next to Shepard’s hand before the morning briefing, Shepard didn’t comment beyond a raised eyebrow and a nod of thanks. She wondered if Miranda spent any time trying to decide whether or not to continue the practice. Miranda probably never had an indecisive moment in her life, but the mental image of her agonizing over the coffeemaker brightened Shepard’s morning considerably. 

“Is there anything I should know before the rest of the squad shows up?” She directed the question at Miranda without taking her eyes off the star map.  

“Your yeoman will let you know if any messages arrive requiring your attention, Commander.”  

“I’m well aware of that, Miranda, but we both know you’re better informed than Ms. Chambers. And,” she added, with a wry smile, still not looking at Miranda, “it’s not as if you don’t read all my messages before I do.” 

_There. Let’s see how she does with that._

Miranda sniffed and sipped her coffee. “Excellent point, Commander. In that case, I can say with utter certainty that there is nothing that should immediately concern you.” 

Shepard glanced up long enough to let Miranda see her smile, then turned back to the star map. “Good to know.” Before she could say anything else, the door opened. Mordin entered, with Jacob close at his heels. She gave them each a nod, and another sickly-sweet smile to Zaeed when he slouched in. He snorted and muttered low under his breath before leaning against the wall, closest to the door. 

“Good morning, everyone,” she began when the door hissed closed. “If no one has anything pressing to discuss, I’ll lay out our next steps --” 

“Excuse me, Commander,” said Jacob. “Shouldn’t Officer Vakarian be here?” 

“As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Taylor, Officer Vakarian won’t be on active duty until he’s cleared by Doctor Chakwas to participate in missions. He’ll attend these briefings at that time.” Almost before she finished speaking, the door opened, Garrus dead-center in the frame. He still wore his half-shattered armor. 

“Garrus,” she said, voice neutral. “Your timing hasn’t suffered. Come in.” She heard Jacob murmur as Garrus stepped into the room. In the overhead lights, the purple wounds along his jaw looked almost red. She smelled medi-gel from across the room, and the thought of Garrus waking up and numbing himself to face a room of strangers pierced her. 

He came as far as the end of the table, facing her through the star map, and gave her a nod. Miranda’s gaze flickered between them before settling on Shepard. 

“We didn’t expect to see you up and around so soon, Officer,” said Jacob into the silence. “You’re a tough son of a bitch.” He held out his hand to Garrus, who shook it awkwardly after a moment’s pause. Shepard had seen Garrus shake hands a few dozen times; whatever awkwardness he had didn’t come from a lack of familiarity with the gesture, but from who was on the other end of the offered hand. She could almost feel Garrus’ tension: Jacob had helped save his life, but the Cerberus uniform disgusted him. 

“I assume this means you’re fit for duty?” she asked, to save him from more internal conflict. Garrus regarded her steadily, nodding. “Good.” She didn’t bother to hide the thread of relief in her voice. His mandibles fluttered, then drew tight against his face. 

“This stage of recruitment is complete, so we’ll be leaving Omega within the hour.” EDI dimmed the lights automatically, until only the squad’s faces were visible in the half-dark. “We’ve picked up some strange readings on Lorek that deserve a closer look -- Cerberus Command thinks it may be a lead on one of their missing operatives. Mr. Taylor, you’ll take a squad to investigate. Standard three-person ground team. Intel suggests Eclipse mercs may be involved, so prepare for biotic resistance as well. Ensign Forbes is an L3, so I’ve assigned her to one of the slots. Your third will be Ensign Klimt; she’ll be able to deal with whatever tech they throw at you.” 

“Aye, Commander.” 

“We have four drones seeded throughout the other systems to search for resources; once they finish scanning, we’ll follow up with any promising leads.” She took a deep breath to steady herself against a low burst of dread. “While Mr. Taylor is investigating Lorek, I’ll take the second shuttle to Alchera.” 

The squad seemed stunned into silence. No one moved for a handful of seconds except Garrus, who pushed off the table. Shepard didn’t need to see his hands to know he had clenched them into fists.  

“Garrus? Got something to add?”  

“You’re going alone,” he stated flatly. 

At Shepard’s side, Miranda folded her arms and started to speak. Shepard held up her hand. Miranda huffed quietly but obeyed. 

“I am,” she said. “No one else needs to go. It’s a personal mission. Twenty members of my crew didn’t make it off the _Normandy_ in time. I’m going to find whatever I can. Their families deserve that much.”  

Mordin sniffed; she heard the slight disdain in the tiny sound and let it roll away, into the dark. Garrus’ eyes gleamed through the star map. His gaze never wavered. 

“Commander,” said Miranda. “If I may, a two-person team will increase your odds of finding evidence of your lost crew. I volunteer.”  

Shepard blinked, momentarily surprised. Miranda didn’t look or sound like she was apologizing, but Shepard recognized the gesture. The unexpected kindness warmed her; she paused before replying. 

“I appreciate that, Miranda, but this is my --” 

_Atonement._

“-- mission. I was their commander. I should be the one to bring them home.” She picked up her mug of coffee but didn’t drink. “I’ve allotted sixteen hours -- ship hours -- to the Lorek mission, including transit time. I don’t expect my run to Alchera will take any longer.” She felt the squad relax as she spoke. The complete neutrality of her voice steadied them; if she thought nothing of visiting the planet where her dead body had rested, they would too. Garrus’ unblinking stare notwithstanding. 

“Once all our business in the Omega nebula is complete, you’ll be briefed on our next recruitment. Mordin, I expect an updated timeline on the seeker swarm countermeasure when I return.” Her leg ached. She fought the urge to massage the muscles; even under the cover of the low lights, she balked at showing discomfort in front of the squad. Too many eyes. “Are there any topics left to discuss?” She let a beat of silence go past, then nodded. “Mr. Taylor, I want your team prepped and ready to move by 0830. Once you’ve dusted off, I’ll head for Alchera. Dismissed.” 

EDI dimmed the star map and gradually brought up the lights. Zaeed was first to leave, with Mordin right behind him, his omni-tool glowing at his wrist. Jacob saluted on his way out, and Shepard swallowed a sigh. She didn’t have time now, but training him out of that particular gesture needed to go on her to-do list.  

Miranda seemed inclined to linger, but then Garrus’ voice rumbled from the opposite end of the table. 

“Shepard. Got a minute?” 

She pushed a errant piece of hair out of her face and nodded without looking at him. “Thank you, Miranda. You have the deck until I return.” 

“Of course, Commander.” Miranda left without a backward look. Once the door closed behind her, Shepard lifted her head and met Garrus’ gaze. 

“Something on your mind, Garrus?” She kept her voice light. No hint of the way her pulse inexplicably leapt when he turned his head and the muscles in his neck shifted under his hide. 

 _Get it together, Shepard._   

“You don’t have to go back there, Shepard.” 

She raised her eyebrows. “Your concern’s appreciated, but if you’re worried I’ll break down weeping when I see what’s left of the _Normandy_ , you’ve forgotten a few things about me.” 

He startled a little at the word _forgotten_ , which in turn startled her; it was so unlike him to give anything away in his voice or movements. Some essential protection had been stripped out of him, and that made a savage, bone-deep fury roll over in her gut. She strangled it, grateful that the stiffness of her skin hid any obvious signs of what blazed in her. 

“I haven’t forgotten anything,” he said carefully. “And I’m allowed to worry about a friend.” 

He threw the word _friend_ on the floor between them like a crumpled piece of tin. He sounded like he _hated_ it, like he wanted to hunt it down and slaughter it. Shepard stepped around the table and stopped an arms’-length away from him. 

“Fine. You’re allowed to worry about me,” she said. “But I need to do this. They were my _crew_ , Garrus. They followed me when I stole the _Normandy_ , same as you. I need to go back for them.” 

“But not alone, Shepard. Alchera -- it’s far away.” He hesitated, then shook his head. The gesture made her stomach knot.  

“Far away?” She gave him a tired laugh. “It’s barely three hours in the shuttle. Is this some roundabout way of saying you’re worried about my piloting skills? Because I did _not_ get brought back to deal with Mako jokes.” 

Garrus gave her a stricken look, the sharp planes of his face tight in what she knew was misery, and slumped down. Only his armor seemed to be holding him upright. He sighed, the sound moving slowly out of his throat, and nodded. 

“Forget I said anything, Shepard. A little snow and wind won’t hurt you.” He forced out a laugh and straightened. “I’ll be in the battery. The numbers are a mess.” 

“Garrus?” 

He stopped at the door. 

“Get some rest,” she said. “I’m going to need you when I get back. There’s a hell of a fight ahead.” 

“I know it,” Garrus replied. “Be careful, Shepard.” 

*** 

Shepard had visited enough worlds to know when one was _wrong_ , either through its own natural malice or through acts of sapient life. A needle would twist and burn in her spine: the more it twisted, the more it burned, the more wary she needed to be. Ilos’ name alone had been enough to heat it red-hot.  

Nothing lived on Ilos except plants and a few whirring insects, heard but not seen. Death had laid its hand on Ilos’ throat, and never lifted it. That -- beyond the geth, beyond Vigil’s words and the mad rush through the Conduit -- had been what twisted the needle. Things could grow on Ilos, but not live. It was a dead world. It had forgotten kindness. 

If Alchera had felt at all like Ilos, Shepard wouldn’t have gotten off the shuttle. The needle stayed still, cool and quiescent. Alchera wasn’t dead. It was stillborn. 

She checked the seals on her hardsuit one last time and resisted the urge to slide her hands over the back of her helmet. With the shuttle powered down, the only sound was the low whisper of her breathing. 

_Now or never._

The airlock ticked through its cycle: thirty seconds to whisk away the last of the oxygen and replace it with methane and ammonia. A lungful of Alchera’s atmosphere would be enough to knock her out; three would probably kill her, in spite of Cerberus’ best work. Shepard shuddered. She couldn’t help thinking of Alchera as an adversary. Even if the Collectors had fired the shots that killed the _Normandy_ , the planet had been what killed _her_. 

Before she had time to shudder again, the airlock’s door opened. 

By design, she had set the shuttle down next to the most visible part of the wreckage: a wide, almost intact section of the _Normandy’_ s hull, the name only slightly damaged by scorch marks. Shepard stared at the hull for a long time, not moving, until her lip smarted. She hadn’t known she had bitten it. 

Five minutes on-planet, and already Alchera was messing with her head. She gave herself a shake and stepped down into the snow. 

It was impossible not to feel like an interloper. Her footsteps marked the snow as she made her way through the scattered wreckage, like breadcrumbs to lead her home. Her breathing rattled inside her helmet. Outside of that and the sound of her boots as they crunched through the brittle layer of ice over the snow, nothing made any noise. 

Her armor trapped and recycled her body heat, but the skin around her mouth and eyes felt chilled, almost white with cold.  

“Focus,” she said, deliberately louder than she needed to. “You’ve got a job.” Her own voice made her wince, but the trick worked: she felt clear-headed again, and the strange chill on her face faded away. 

The old CIC lay shattered a few dozen meters away. By all reports, it had been one of the sections hit hardest by the Collectors’ blast. In her head, the black hole woke briefly, and she was running up the stairs from the crew deck, a hand over her face to shield herself from the fire.  

_“Come on baby, hold together!”_

_The door at the top of the stairs with a hiss. What had been the CIC -- her CIC -- was a clotted mess of melted metal and severed wires. Off to her left, one of the nav displays sparked once and went out in a shower of sparks. Joker kept shouting over the comms, so Shepard fixed her eyes on the cockpit and picked her steps carefully over the places where the floor had been torn away. Overhead, the stars glittered through a massive, ship-killing hole._

She slipped back into her body, the chill creeping back into her face. Her armor pinched through her undersuit. The sudden urge to take off her helmet shivered through her. Three breaths, and then she wouldn’t have to worry about Cerberus or the Collectors again. She could rest. 

The logical part of her brain knew the urge was a claustrophobic response to being trapped inside her armor, without anyone to talk to. She had no reference point, so --

_Stay with it. No one to pick you up if you fall._

In elementary school, her class had watched a vid on ancient burial grounds: the Native Americans, the Aztecs, the Chinese. What had impressed her most was the restive stillness, the implication of movement just outside her line of sight -- the suggestion that, if they wanted to, the corpses would sit up and start making use of all they had been buried with. 

Alchera was the exact opposite. A crystalline purity laid over the crash site. The _Normandy_ had been torn apart, but it rested peacefully in the snow and ice, arrested at the precise moment of its death. 

 _What was that Ash said? Some weird quote about only dead gods being gods forever._ Shepard reached out and traced the jagged edge of a hole. _Fitting._

She started walking. 

Shepard paused when she reached the Mako, and punched one of its tires. _Hello, old friend. You still smell like MREs and sweat? Bet you do._ It had somehow come through the fall almost intact. One of its axles was cracked and warped, the tire attached to it badly askew, but otherwise it looked exactly as it did every time she had seen it. 

She snapped her eyes shut as the hole in her head crackled and spat out a few frames of memory. Their edges gleamed, knife-sharp, against her eyelids.

_Garrus peered up as she stopped and leaned against his console. “Commander,” he said, and bent back to the axle._

_“How’s the patient?”_

_“Despite your best efforts, it’ll be functional in a few hours. Better than functional, really, and ready for you to torture again.”_

_She laughed. “Who says I’m torturing the Mako?”_

_He gave her the mandible flutter that passed for a turian’s fleeting grin. “My mistake. It’ll be ready for you the next time you want to torture a ground squad.”_  

 _“Well said, Garrus. Carry on.” Ash waved her over from across the room. Shepard grinned down at him as she pushed off the console._  

She had to remind herself that those days were gone, as dead as the ship that had carried them. Ash was dead, and Garrus was out of reach.  

And that was the core of the problem: the whole idea of _reach._ That Garrus had ever been -- would ever be -- within hers. 

A time and a place existed for turning over this particular problem, somewhere she could trace her body’s reactions to their catalyst -- but not here. Not on Alchera. She turned her inner gaze away from the memories, not waiting to see what else the hole would show her if she lingered, and faced north and the shuttle. Time to find what she could, and to say goodbye. 

Before she could take another step, a familiar black shadow unfurled itself at her side, and a voice crackled inside her helmet. 

“Hello, Shepard,” said the woman. 

Shepard turned slowly, her shotgun half-raised. The chill settled over her face again. “You.” She fought against a resigned laugh, and failed. “Of course you’d be here. You’re in my head.” 

The woman peered at her with bright eyes. “Not in,” she said, with a hint of reproach. “ _Of_.” 

“Semantics.” Shepard hefted her shotgun up to rest against her hip. The woman’s eyes stayed fixed on Shepard’s face. The shotgun didn’t seem to alarm her. “In, of, it’s the same thing. You’re not really here. You’re whatever Cerberus left behind in my head. You’re _flotsam._ ” 

She realized she was breathing hard, and shut her mouth with a click.  

The woman’s mouth moved in the beginning of a smile. She looked like she was about to sit down to a fine meal after weeks of nothing but bread and water. No one had looked at Shepard like that except Garrus, but the woman’s hunger was joyful, not stricken.  

“You’re not real,” Shepard said again. 

“And yet,” said the woman. She smiled. Her voice didn’t echo in Shepard’s helmet -- small mercy -- but the way it felt like she spoke right into Shepard’s ear was almost worse. 

The woman seemed so horribly plausible, so solid; giving into the idea of her had a seductive clarity. Shepard could choose to believe a helmetless woman, white-eyed and slender, was talking to her on the planet that had killed her. She had seen stranger things in her life. 

But Alchera didn’t occupy the same space as the rest of the galaxy, the same way those ancient tombs were removed from the world surrounding them. If Shepard chose to believe in the woman here, on Alchera, she had to believe in the woman unfolding herself on the _Normandy_ , and hissing warnings on Omega.  

Shepard shook her head. “No. Stay here and freeze. I’m not bringing you back with me.”  

The woman’s hands twitched, and the movement echoed the way Garrus’ hands had clenched on blood-slick tiles. Shepard turned away, from the woman, from Garrus. 

“You remember nothing, then?” said the woman. Her voice sounded like it was being dragged through broken glass. “Nothing at all.” 

Shepard turned away, her hand dropping to her shotgun, even though the needle in her spine was still cool. “There’s nothing to remember,” she said. “I was dead, not dreaming.” 

The woman laughed, small and furious, and lunged. Shepard had enough time to raise her arm to block a blow, but the woman grabbed her wrist and wrenched her arm back. 

“I am sorry, Shepard,” she said. “You will not enjoy this.” She slammed her other hand down onto the back of Shepard’s helmet, right over the life-support unit. 

Shepard’s body went dark. Every nerve switched off, and she was trapped in her head, unmoored, floating above the hole. The woman screamed, low and jagged, and the sound drove Shepard down, into the tar-black opening as it roared to welcome her. 

***

_Joker claws at the door of the lifepod. He wants to help, he tries to get to her, but even in zero-gravity, his legs slow him down. Shepard hits the door control. Joker keeps screaming, and all Shepard can think is how much she wants him to shut up._

  _Another blast from the ship hits what’s left of the_ Normandy _, and the impact sends her spiraling through the wreckage. The innards of her ship -- wires, panels, super-conducting fluids -- dance around her as she tumbles out the hole in what used to be the ceiling._  

 _She tells herself to breathe, that this is the nightmare every spacefarer must confront, and if she stays calm and remembers to breathe, she will find a way to safety._  

_So she inhales, and chokes when no air comes._

_Her hardsuit, designed to save as much of her as it can, for as long as it can, reacts by injecting her with medi-gel in an attempt to steady her. All it does is numb her, so she can barely feel the pressure of her hands as she tries to find the leak._

_The planet’s wide curve opens sweetly under her, and she realizes she’s not tumbling over and over any longer. She’s falling, head-first, and she’s picking up speed._  

_The medi-gel dulls the adrenalin in her system, but what it can’t dull is the touch of fear that slips through her, sharp and insistent._

_Fury boils out of her, and she tries to scream at the simple, mindless injustice; that this is her end, when there’s still work to do, that it’s undignified and messy, that she knows there are still people -- her people -- on the_ Normandy _as it shatters._

_Alchera pulls her down, and the medi-gel can’t shut away the fire that eats through her body._

_She’s awake long enough to try and scream, just once._  

_***_

_After the fire, there is nothing until she opens her eyes in a dark hallway. Nearby, someone breathes deeply in sleep and rolls over._

_Her senses blow outward. The air smells like old sweat, too sweet to be human or asari, with a distinct male note at the base. Clothes and boots litter the floor, leading to a half-open door._

_Shepard blinks, and finds herself inside the room behind the door. The smell of sweat is stronger here, not yet unpleasant, but thick and familiar. What little light there is in the room falls over the bed and the long tangle of legs and arms under the covers._

_She knows she’s dead. When she tries to breathe, nothing happens inside her body, even though her mouth opens and her chest expands. She can smell and taste, and feel the weave of her clothes under the palms of her hands, but the sensations come to her like suggestions from a great distance. She’s been purified of anything resembling life._

_Commander Shepard: savior of the Citadel, survivor of Akuze. Killed in action, touched by fire._

_She bites down on her lip without thinking, and the tiny shock of pain surprises her. It’s faint, and far away, but present._

_Before she can summon more than the first surge of anger -- not fear, because the worst has already happened -- the sleeper turns over, and turns his face to the light._  

_Whatever she is now, she isn’t numb enough not to feel selfish regret. It isn’t fair. It’s not._

_There’s a chair, but she sits on the edge of the bed. His breathing is getting shallow. He’ll be awake soon. She can wait, now that she has nothing but time._

***

Shepard came back to herself with her alarm buzzing. She slapped at her wrist to shut it off, but the buzzing went on, now with a calm voice speaking under it. 

“You now have twenty-one minutes of oxygen remaining.” said a polite voice. 

 _My suit alarm,_ she thought blearily. _My goddamn suit --_

Her hand automatically flew to the life-support unit, checking the connections. Everything was in place, and air kept rushing to her lungs when she inhaled, but a part of her still expected fire, and to feel the headlong downward rush. 

 _I_ fell. _Past tense,_ she thought, and hit the code to shut down the alarm. The abrupt silence made her dizzy. She rolled on her back with a grunt; her left side was stiff from lying on the ice for so long. Small mercy that she hadn’t frozen. 

“You now have twenty minutes of oxygen remaining,” the cool, metallic voice informed her. “Recommended action: evacuation.” 

Twenty minutes of oxygen remaining, out of reserves that were supposed to last six hours. The woman had knocked her out cold for more than five hours, and then left her to freeze. 

_The woman._

Shepard pulled her shotgun from its holster. It would be less than useless against a hallucination, but its weight calmed her. A gun and her amp; those were all she needed. All she had ever needed. 

“If you’re still out there,” she said, “I’m awake. Your trick didn’t work. I’m not crazy.” 

Nothing moved, no dark shadow pulled itself out of empty air. Shepard planted her feet more firmly on the ice and tried not to think about what it meant that she was talking to herself. This was one habit she’d have to break, if she wanted to believe herself when she said she wasn’t crazy. 

“You now have nineteen minutes of oxygen remaining. Recommended action: evacuation.” 

She would go back to the shuttle, switch out oxygen packs, and radio the _Normandy_ that she was extending her trip. Then she would start the search for her crew, and she wouldn’t leave until she found all twenty of them. 

Once that was done, she would leave Alchera behind and never think of it again. And the woman could stay here, ice-locked, nothing more than a bad dream. 

Shepard took one step out of the depression her body had melted in the ice, and went still. A black lump of slag sat in between two small outcroppings of ice, not five feet from where she stood.  

Not slag. Her helmet.  

Her mind started to rationalize it immediately: she had missed it as she walked over the crash site; snow had hidden it and then the wind blew the snow away. She let the flimsy excuses fade without holding them too tightly. There was no wind on Alchera. She hadn’t seen it, because it hadn’t been there before. Before the woman touched her. 

She felt hot and itchy inside her skin, like she did in the hours before a fever. The weight of her shotgun didn’t comfort her anymore, so she slid it back into her holster and squatted for a better look. Something silver and tangled glittered in the cup of her helmet. For a moment, she saw herself, stretched out in the snow, the helmet holding the burned remains of her head together.  

“Oh God.” She wanted to laugh, but she was tired, so damn tired. A thick, underwater feeling settled over her, quiet and dreamy. “I wanted proof.” She dipped her hand into the helmet and brushed her fingers against the dog tags. She didn’t have to count them to know there were twenty. 

*** 

Shepard arrived back on the _Normandy_ well into the night cycle. She sagged a little under the weight of her relief when no one met her in the shuttle bay. Jacob’s team hadn’t returned from Lorek, and anyone still awake focused on their duties, rather than her return. No one interrupted her solitary elevator ride.

She gripped her helmet. The dogtags chimed against each other as they shifted. In the morning, she would draft a message to Hackett, and pray he’d read it when it arrived. The messages to the families would take more time; she had six months’ worth of memories to sift through for each one. At least those memories had stayed unclouded. The ones pulled out of her head were misty, like fog in a forest. When she reached for them, they melted through her fingers and re-formed just beyond her grasp. 

_How poetic, Shepard. Save it for the letters home._

Twenty lives, twenty letters. She might have been two years removed from their deaths, but she wasn’t too far away to grieve. They had followed her. They had _trusted_ her.  

Apologizing to the dead was useless; apologizing to the dead after she had been snatched back was grotesque. Tears meant nothing to the dead. She had so little to offer them: not rest, not peace -- just a promise to demand every bloody coin of the debt the Collectors owed them. She could give them satisfaction. 

For that, grief would be the best tool of all. 

*** 

The woman was in her cabin when Shepard arrived. 

 _You_ , Shepard thought, with a complete lack of anger. Nothing had ever surprised her less.

“Come to play in my brain again?” When she stepped into her cabin, a thick, dreamy weight crept into her muscles. Every movement felt like she had to fight for it against a strong current. Her mind stayed sharp at the center, wary and poised to resist. 

The woman clasped her hands behind her back and lifted her chin. The gesture wasn’t a challenge; even if it had been, Shepard was too exhausted to respond. The woman’s eyes flicked down to the helmet in Shepard’s arms, and her mouth softened. 

“You brought them home.” Her voice was nothing more than a whisper, all the rough edges gone - sand instead of gravel.

Shepard nodded. Her own voice felt fragile in her mouth. “I couldn’t leave them there, even if I didn’t find them.” She set the helmet on her desk. “Nice touch, by the way. It’ll take me forever to rationalize that.” 

“Yes. And --" 

“That’s what I want to talk about. The _and._ ” Shepard started to flick the clasps on her armor. “The _and_ that says you’re real.”  

The woman stayed silent as Shepard undressed. When the last piece of her armor had been stowed in its cabinet, Shepard turned back to her. 

_Can I believe? Never been afraid of leaps before, but this? Can I?_

“What are you?” Shepard asked. “No tricks. None of this _in, of_ shit. Tell me.” 

The woman tilted her head. Before she spoke, Shepard knew she was about to be stonewalled, and forced herself not to throw up her hands. She waited. 

“What do you think I am?” asked the woman. She lifted her chin another fraction of an inch.  

Shepard set her teeth against the sore spot in her lip, but didn’t bite down. She counted out three slow breaths before she answered. “The answer I preferred -- that you were just some by-product of being brought back from the dead -- that’s right out. I didn’t find my helmet, or those tags. So until I find a reason to think otherwise, you’re not in my head.” She rubbed her hands over her thighs. The friction of her palms against the weave of her undersuit stopped the chill creeping into her skin, and hid the slight tremor in her fingers. “You might be a Cerberus trick, but I can’t see how. Or why. The Illusive Man cares about the mission too much to risk damaging me before I’ve outlived my usefulness.”  

 _You’re rambling, Shepard. Cut it out._ She stopped and held her breath. The chill, brittle feeling crept back around her eyes and mouth while she paused. The image of her face covered with clusters of ice-crystals made her shudder. She scrubbed her hands over her face, and the feeling slid back, dulled but waiting for the moment her vigilance wavered. When she was sure she could keep going without her teeth chattering, she exhaled. 

 “I don’t know what I think you are. You’re here. You’re on Omega. You’re everywhere I am. It’s like you’re haunting me. So are you a ghost?” She paused, and groped for a better word.  “A -- revenant?” 

The woman made a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moue of distaste, and Shepard held up her hands. 

“Fine. Whatever. So you’re not a ghost. Then what?” 

“You have to remember,” said the woman. “You _knew._ ”

Shepard laughed and sank down on the couch. “How many times do I have to say it? I was _dead._ Even if there was anything to remember, I don’t think I’d want to. Benezia said there was no light. Which you’d know, if you were in my head.”  

“I am _of you,”_ said the woman, with a dogged patience in her voice and posture. “Not _in you_. That is the difference. And I remember Benezia,” she added, with a thoughtful cast to her mouth.  

Shepard rubbed her hands over her face. It took more effort than she liked to admit to keep herself from snapping at the woman. “I just want a straight answer from _someone_ ,” she said, and closed her eyes.

Deep in her head, her training warned her against taking her eyes off such a huge variable, but the needle stayed silent in her spine. If it moved at all, Shepard never would have let her get within touching distance. The woman could scramble her head with a single touch, but she had apologized for it -- and while Shepard dreamed, the woman had gathered the last traces of her crew. 

 _I am of you, not in you._  

The crew.  

Shepard hissed as the hole twisted inside her head, almost painfully. She held back a wince and turned a glare on the woman. 

“Get out of my head,” she snarled. “ _Get out._ ” 

The woman only lifted her chin a little higher, and watched Shepard with bright, flat eyes as the hole twisted again, and spat something out: her own voice, traveling down from a great distance.  _  
_

“Oh my God.” Shepard covered her mouth with both hands. Sweat broke out between her shoulderblades. “You said _of,_ not _in._ ” 

The woman nodded. She shifted minutely, and something that passed for eagerness flitted across her features.  

“A spirit,” said Shepard into her hands. Now that she had her teeth in the idea, she was surprised she hadn’t thought of it before. It seemed so well-worn, as if she’d remembered it, not discovered it. 

 _Maybe I did_. The memories glittered, jewel-like, in the interior of her skull, but broke apart when she tried to bring them into focus. A rumpled bed, the smell of sweat, and fire -- then gone.

She glanced up at the woman, just in time to see all the stiffness melt out of her body. 

“Yes.” The woman sighed the word through a sweet, trembling smile. “Oh, my Shepard, _yes_. You remembered. Thank you.” 

Shepard ran her hands through her hair. “Remembering is a strong word, but you’re welcome.” The chill had disappeared; she felt over-heated, and jittery with adrenalin. 

What Shepard knew about spirits came from a handful of conversations: with Lorik Qui’in during a quiet drink on Noveria, with Nihlus, with Garrus. Purpose gave birth to spirits, and they operated as something between guides and muses. They were liminal creatures. Twilight children. 

She wanted to laugh, badly, out of relief and frustration. One question had been answered -- but what good did it do her? 

 _My life,_ thought Shepard, _could not be any stranger. Not sure where spirits rank, but they’re somewhere above Prothean Beacon._

The thought startled a laugh out of her, loud enough to echo against every wall in her cabin before it raced to the ceiling and circled there. 

“Shepard?” The woman bent gracefully at the waist to peer into Shepard’s face. With her dull armor, her hands clasped behind her back, and her head tilted to the side, she looked like a drab, curious little bird. Shepard stuffed her fist against her mouth to hold back another laugh, shaking her head.  

“I’m fine -- it’s just --” The laugh rippled out of her, loud enough to fill the room, loud enough to leave no room for echoes. “It’s just, I’ve been alive a week, I’ve got to deal with the Collectors, and nowall of _this_.” She threw out her arm, taking in the woman, her helmet, the ship, even herself, before she dissolved into laughter again. By the time she could speak, she had to blink away tears. “Sorry. It’s just a lot to take.” She swiped her arm across her eyes and looked up. 

The woman was gone. 

 “Figures,” Shepard gasped, and started laughing again. 

 When she had herself under something resembling control, she turned her face up to the ceiling. She should have asked this question days ago, but she let -- 

Yes. She let her feelings get in the way of her better judgment. She let herself get clouded. 

 _That’s no excuse_. _Hope better late than never is true._  

“EDI?” 

“Yes, Shepard?” 

“What does the Illusive Man think of these...conversations?” 

“You are operating under the assumption that I am required to report all conversations to the Illusive Man.” When EDI paused, Shepard frowned at the ceiling. 

“Aren’t you?”

“I am required to report anything in your behavior that compromises the mission. I have yet to determine whether or not these conversations do. Until that time, I will not report to the Illusive Man or Miranda.” 

“Thanks for that,” said Shepard. She rubbed her mouth, testing for the chill. “You can log out now, EDI.” 

“Of course, Shepard. Logging you out.” 

 

 


	28. Chapter 28

If anything happened between her wild burst of laughter and a headlong tumble into sleep, Shepard didn’t remember it. She woke up her habitual five minutes before her alarm, splayed out along the couch, full of aches that even her implants couldn’t smooth away. 

“Oh good.” She groaned as she sat up. “Stiff neck. Still human.” 

She had slept dreamlessly, as far as she knew, for almost six hours. More than she usually allowed herself, by about two hours, and the combination of the night before and the extra sleep made her feel -- well, hungover. Dry mouth, gritty eyes, sore body. 

When she didn’t work off her excess energy after a mission, she woke up feeling a second behind normal time: not out-of-step enough for others to notice, but the lag between thought and action left her frustrated and snappish -- and _that,_ she knew, would be noticed. Allowing herself to oversleep, by her standards, made it even harder to adjust to the quieter rhythms of the ship. 

She had enough time for a shower and a light breakfast, if she hurried. Jacob and his team needed to deliver their report on Lorek before the morning briefing. 

Her stomach rumbled as she stretched and stood up. Her muscles still carried dregs of dreamy heaviness, and that, and the helmet on her desk, were the only signs anything beyond sleep had happened in her cabin the night before. Flimsy proof.

“And yet,” Shepard murmured, without thinking. 

“So,” she said a moment later, after she unzipped her undersuit and dropped it on the floor on her way to the shower. “A spirit, huh?” The door to the bathroom hissed open, and she glanced back at her cabin before stepping inside. No movement, no shadows, no woman. “Not much to go on, but thanks for the clue.” 

She slapped the lever and waited for the water to heat before ducking under the spray. 

“Nice disappearing act too,” she said, raising her voice over the rush of water. “Just when I think I’m getting somewhere, you disappear. So now I’ve got a name for what you are, but what good does that do me when I don’t even know what that is?” 

Shepard stopped talking as she rinsed the stale sweat out of her hair. If the woman was in earshot, she evidently decided against responding. After the last of the soap bubbles washed down the drain, Shepard cleared her throat. 

“It shouldn’t be so easy to believe in you,” she said. “If anything, that’s why I shouldn’t. Nothing worth getting is ever easy. Fact of life. Earning something is the only way to know why it matters. But you’re so... _comforting_.” 

There. She’d admitted it. Shepard waited a beat before shutting off the water and wringing out her hair. When nothing but silence followed, she pushed on. 

“When I died, all I could think about was how pissed I was that it was happening. I had work to do. I didn’t think about what could come after. I always figured it would be dark. Dark and quiet, if I was lucky. Nothing would happen. I would just be done.” She wrapped a towel around her body and walked back into her cabin. 

Still empty. Shepard inhaled, low and flat, and let out the breath in a gust.  Rivulets of cooling water ran down her arms and between her breasts, raising gooseflesh as they traveled. When she touched her skin, it felt warm and pliable. Almost alive. No trace of the clustering chill remained around her mouth and eyes. But she remembered it, and shivered. 

“Now there’s you. If you’re real -- if what you pulled out of my head is real -- then something did happen after I died. You want me to get it back.” She gripped her elbows and closed her eyes, reaching out for the memory of a rumpled bed, and too-sweet sweat. It glittered, jewel-like, just out of her grasp. She had a brief glimpse of long legs, one arm flung out and over the edge of the mattress, and a heavy, curved shadow near the shoulders before the image decayed, the sleeper’s face lost. The smell lingered a little longer, enough for the ache to rise in her throat, and then it was gone too. 

Shepard kept her eyes closed. Her fingernails dug crescents into her new skin.  

 _I was so close. If I could just see their face --_  

The hole in her head chattered, loud enough to make her cringe. She waited for something -- anything -- to rise to its surface, but the hole stilled and went smooth as glass. 

 _Glass can be shattered_. 

Shepard opened her eyes. The water from her hair dripped down her legs and puddled at her feet. A glance at the clock on her terminal told her she’d wasted all the time she had for breakfast. Her briefing with Jacob was in five minutes. 

“Why?” she asked her empty room. “Why do you want me to remember? What did I do then, that matters now?” 

The woman -- the _spirit_ \-- stayed silent and absent. Shepard hissed and shook her head. Above her amp, the pinprick beginning of a headache waited. 

“Fine,” she said. “If I can’t get answers from you, I’ll ask Garrus. Turians and spirits, right? And if I’m lucky, he won’t think I’m crazy.” 

 _If I’m lucky, he’ll actually talk to me_ , she thought, with a hard, grim smile. 

 ***

Shepard held out her hand for the mug of coffee before Miranda made it around the table. Miranda huffed, but handed the mug over.  

“Good morning to you, Shepard,” she said. “I take it your trip to Alchera went well?”  

Shepard kept her eyes on the star map as she nodded. “It did,” she replied. She caught her hand as it made its way to her face, to test the skin at her mouth, and forced it to rest palm-down on the table. The woman’s plausibility, however attractive, had no place in the briefing room, where everything moved in smooth, ordered lines. If Shepard hadn’t been sure her helmet still sat on her desk, she’d have already started exorcising the idea. 

_Interesting choice of words._

Miranda hummed thoughtfully and sipped her coffee. “I’ve submitted Jacob’s report to the Illusive Man. He’ll be curious why the agent’s information wasn’t included.”  

“The thought had occurred to me,” said Shepard. “EDI, bring up the map for the Widow System.”  

“The Citadel?” Miranda blinked. “Ah. Yes, the thief.” 

“You don’t approve?” The star map blazed open, the rich layers of magenta and violet gases wreathing the faint outline of the Citadel. Dusty, yellowed memories flooded Shepard’s head: the smell of the flowers on the Presidium, the elevator to the Council chambers, Tali throwing a grenade over her shoulder and laughing.  

Good memories, but useless. She pushed them away and focused. 

“I don’t disapprove,” said Miranda. Shepard arched an eyebrow, but Miranda hadn’t finished. “I trust the Illusive Man’s decisions regarding personnel, but while Ms. Goto’s resume is -- _extensive_ \-- it seems less than optimal, considering our mission parameters.” 

“Do you know what she looks like?” asked Shepard. 

“I -- no, Commander. I hardly see how that’s relevant.”

“No one knows what she looks like. Or, if they do, they can’t place her.” Shepard took a long swallow of coffee and set her mug next to Miranda’s. “It means she can move unseen, get to places we can’t, and not get noticed along the way.” 

Miranda huffed again. “Ears and eyes in all the right places.” 

“Exactly. She’s not front-line material, but she’ll be useful.” Shepard handed Miranda the datapad, Goto’s dossier already displayed. “She’s also eager. Agreed to do the mission for the price of a favor.” 

Miranda scanned the datapad. “And the favor is?” 

“I’ll find out when I talk to her.” 

“Bail, probably,” said Miranda. She handed the datapad back to Shepard. “Or paying off some disgruntled employer. I hope her usefulness is worth the price.” 

Shepard started to point out the price of cynicism, but discarded it and nodded instead. “Agreed. Anything else before the others show up?” 

Miranda picked up her datapad from the table. “Nothing urgent, but EDI picked up an odd report from one of the ships docked on Omega.” At Shepard’s look, she shrugged. “Everything’s useful, Commander, and so close to the Omega-4 relay --”  

“Understood. What did EDI pick up? It’d have to be pretty strange to stand out here.” 

Before Miranda could reply, the door to the briefing room slid open. Shepard’s pulse leapt in her throat, but only Mordin entered, Jacob at his heels. 

“We’ll finish after the briefing,” she told Miranda, ignoring how her curiosity protested being interrupted. Miranda nodded and tucked the datapad against her hip. 

Zaeed entered a moment later, reeking of smoke, smirking when Miranda wrinkled her nose. Shepard foresaw an unpleasant lecture on prohibited ship activities in Zaeed’s future, and hoped she could manage to be safely off the _Normandy_ when it occurred.  

The Collectors weren’t anywhere near her biggest problem. After a few weeks of waiting for the hammer to fall on-ship, they might actually be a relief. 

She gave Garrus sixty seconds to make an appearance, enough time for everyone else to settle into their places, not enough time to make it look like she lingered for him. He walked in at the fifty-seven second mark, still in his battered armor. Like he had the day before, he stood facing her through the star map, but he kept his eyes averted, focused just to her left. 

A fresh wave of guilt hit her when she looked at him. His less-threatening but still painful injuries had asserted themselves once the worst were cared for, and he moved with stiff-necked grace. When a velvety red glow from the star map slid over his face and caught the metallic undertone in his plates, she gave herself a mental shake and cleared her throat.  

 _Down, girl_ , she told herself. _Time and a place._  

“Good morning,” she said. Everyone but Garrus and Miranda murmured a greeting back at her. “Our business in the Omega Nebula is concluded for the time being. Our next stop is the Citadel. It’s a simple recruitment run, so five shiptime hours have been allotted. This isn’t shore leave. I’ll make the run on my own.” 

No one commented. Miranda didn’t even raise an eyebrow. Either her solo trip to Alchera gave the impression she preferred working alone -- which wasn’t entirely inaccurate -- or they planned to keep any protests to themselves. 

Both options worked for her. Five hours gave her plenty of time to meet with Ms. Goto, and pay Anderson a visit. She was reasonably certain he would see her, if only because Anderson was an incredulous bastard and would want to confirm whatever the Alliance moles in Cerberus had reported back. 

She would lay odds on his reaction being closer to a punch in the face than a handshake, though. 

“After we leave Citadel space, we’ll set course for the prison ship _Purgatory_. We’ll pick up the inmate known as “Jack”, and continue on to -- Garrus?” 

Garrus dropped his fists, which had been clenched at his chest and let out a shallow breath. He met her eyes for a moment before pulling his spine straight and staring over her head. “It’s operated by one of the Blue Suns franchises,” he said, stiff and controlled. “Is this Jack worth dealing with them?” 

“I don’t like it,” she said, hoping he’d be able to hear the sympathy in her voice. “But Jack, whoever they are, is one of the most powerful recorded human biotics. Their dossier states they consistently spike higher than an L2, without any of the side effects. That kind of firepower will come in handy.” 

“If you like brute strength,” rumbled Zaeed from his corner. Shepard gave him a blank look that he returned, untouched by irony. 

“I appreciate your input, gentlemen,” she said, with enough of a twist on the words to make Zaeed snort. “We’re going to need a well-rounded squad to take on the Collectors. Brute strength is just one weapon. We’re getting Jack.” 

She waited for any other smart replies. None came. 

“Moving on. I’m leading the ground squad on this one.” She hadn’t mentioned it to anyone else, but she planned on that being SOP for all recruitment missions. The dossiers had their uses, but she wanted the chance to make an in-person judgment call. If any of them pinged the needle in her spine, she needed to know before they got on the Normandy. “Zaeed, is there anything we should know about who runs the _Purgatory_?”

He picked his teeth with a thumbnail and shrugged. “Run by a turian, name of Kuril.” 

“Barefaced,” interjected Garrus, and went silent. 

Zaeed nodded. “Yeah, barefaced. Has all these ideas about civic service and the greater good, though. Probably just bore you to tears about how he’s trying to help the galaxy. Not a threat.” 

Boredom was a very great threat, in Shepard’s opinion, but she kept that to herself. “Noted.” She filed away the barefaced comment for later; she remembered the basic meaning of the concept, but she wanted confirmation before she acted on it. 

“Miranda, you’ll accompany me to the _Purgatory_. I don’t foresee any issues regarding the transfer, but a Cerberus representative on-site might be useful.” 

“Understood, Commander.” 

After that, the briefing moved to Jacob’s report on Lorek. Shepard half-tuned him out, her mind already on the Citadel, and cut a glance at Garrus through the star map. 

His armor no longer looked like he used it to hold himself up, and that alone should have been a comfort, but the lines of his arms were too straight, his neck held too much tension. 

She read it all in a glance, and looked away when he shifted, his eyes on Jacob. Catching him after the briefing to question him about spirits made her feel small, and resoundingly selfish. He didn’t want to be there; he only suffered the briefings out of a sense of duty. 

The quiet, plaintive voice of her self-pity spoke up. _He doesn’t want to see me. He won’t look at me._ She slapped it down and focused on Jacob’s voice, just in time for him to finish his report. 

“Thank you, Mr. Taylor.” She caught his salute as she faced the star map and fought a grimace. “Mordin, what’s the status of the countermeasure?” 

“Early days yet, Shepard,” he replied, before launching into a technical explanation that she lost track of seven words in. She nodded, sensing the results so far were positive based on his hand movements. 

By the time he wound down, without visibly needing to catch his breath, even Miranda’s polite interest had glazed over, and Zaeed looked openly mutinous. 

“Thank you, Mordin. Daily updates, even if it’s just to say nothing’s changed.” 

“Of course.” 

“Any other business?” When no one replied, Shepard rapped her fist on the table. “All right. Prepare for the jump to Citadel space. Dismissed.” 

She opened her mouth, already forming Garrus’ name, but in the moment before she spoke, Miranda held out her datapad. 

“Commander? Shall we discuss the report?” 

Shepard pulled her gaze from Garrus’ retreating back and nodded. Her questions would have to wait -- possibly for the best, if Garrus was as raw as he seemed under the stiff, correct posturing. It didn’t ease the knot in her gut as the door slid shut behind him. “Let me see what you’ve got.” 

The first few sentences seemed harmless enough: a few brief notes about turian smugglers based on a ship called the _Chanteris_. They dealt mainly in black market pharmaceuticals, specifically those of the performance-enhancing variety -- and Shepard wondered if Garrus had ever run into them.

 _If he did, it’s probably a hilarious story._ She skimmed farther down, and found nothing odd, or even worth noting. “I don’t think this is worth our time, Miranda, unless they’re smuggling for the Collectors.” 

“My thoughts exactly, Commander, but the sixth paragraph contains what caught EDI’s attention.” 

Shepard held back a weary huff and skipped ahead. 

_...crewmembers mentioned sightings of white-eyed humanoid figures._

The hole gave its sideways twist, and spilled over, ink-dark, into the rest of her head. She locked her knees and stayed upright through pure will, as her vision swam. 

_The sleeper shifted his legs, and began to roll over._

She pressed her fist to her forehead, trying not to groan. 

 _A too-long arm sprawled across the bed, and the smell of sweat grew stronger, sweeter._  

“Shepard? Are you all right?” Miranda scooped the datapad out of Shepard’s hand and laid it on the table. “Are your implants bothering you?” 

“I’m fine,” she answered. Her voice stretched wire-tight as she pulled it out of her throat, past the persistent, obscure ache. “Just a headache.” She dropped her arm. Miranda’s features clarified in front of her, curiosity warring with a confused, reluctant concern on her face. 

The sleeper was gone. 

“I’m fine,” Shepard repeated. “So, EDI’s picking up hallucinations?” 

“So it would seem,” said Miranda. “Her programming requires her to report any unusual activity that may be related to the Collectors. And this close to the Omega-4 relay --”

“-- we can’t be too careful. Point taken. Any other ships reporting these sightings?” The longer she talked, the longer she played at normality, the more she felt normal. Or, at least, what passed for her _normal._  

“Two more ships, human and asari.” Miranda folded her arms. “Hallucinations in one ship is a point of interest. Three ships? That’s a pattern.” 

 _Four ships_ , thought Shepard. Her head ached. Finally, she had the proof she wanted, and it existed entirely outside of her head. _Careful what you wish for._

_***_

Miranda tried to insist on a spot-check of Shepard’s implants. Before Shepard blinked away the last afterimages of the room and the sleeper inside it, Miranda had her omni-tool display open and chiming.  

Shepard smoothed away the lines in her forehead with clammy fingertips. The datapad glowed on the table, one sentence written in letters that burned like fire. 

“Is that necessary? You know better than most that headaches are biotics’ territory.” 

Miranda gave Shepard a measured look over the orange glow on her arm. “Commander, at this stage, any adverse reaction could indicate a larger underlying problem. I really should --” 

“Miranda, I’m fine.” She put extra steel into her words, in case Miranda pushed the issue. “An exam will just give the headache ideas of grandeur. Food and a few minutes of quiet will take care of it.” A little truth made a lie more believable, if not palatable; the headache was real enough to make Shepard sound convincing.  

Miranda pursed her lips and closed her display. “If you insist, Commander. But _I_ must insist that you see me immediately if the headache worsens. I advise foods that are high in carbohydrates.”  

“You act like this is my first time through this rodeo. I’ve had headaches before.”  

That earned her a small smile from Miranda. “Not with quite so much tech involved, Commander. I’d rather help you avoid some of the nastier side effects.”  

Shepard started to form a question about what, exactly, the side effects were and how Miranda knew about them, but shook herself before she spoke. “You know what? I don’t want to know. If I ever ask, remind me of this conversation.” 

“Understood, Commander.” Miranda tucked her smile away and pointed to the datapad. “Shall I have EDI continue to monitor for similar reports?”  

“Yes,” Shepard replied, no hesitation. “And I want them delivered to my private terminal, marked priority, until I say otherwise. This stays between us, Miranda. I don’t want the crew getting wind of what may turn out to be nothing. They’ll have enough to focus on by the end.”  

“That they will.” Miranda gathered her various datapads. Shepard watched as the report on the figures disappeared between two others, but hard as she tried, she knew exactly where it rested in the stack. “I don’t want to keep you, Commander, but there is one last matter.”  

“Go ahead.” 

“Officer Vakarian -- he’s rebuffed all of Yeoman Chambers’ attempts to start a dialogue.” 

 _I don’t blame him._ Shepard held back the acid reply and nodded for Miranda to go on. 

“I’m concerned for his functionality.”  

The word choice stung, but Shepard let it pass without comment. “I’d be more concerned if he was begging to get back to work, after what he went through. Tell Chambers to lay off. No informal chats, no surprise visits to the main battery. That goes for the rest of the crew,” she added, on a flash of inspiration. “She’s to observe and listen. If someone chooses to open up to her, fine. Until then, she’s strictly hands-off.” 

She might have just shot herself in the foot by cutting off a potential way to gather information, but Shepard couldn’t bring herself to care. Relying on second-hand impressions meant she absorbed someone else’s biases. She preferred relying on her own. 

Miranda gave her another look, then nodded. For a dizzy moment, Shepard thought she might salute, but Miranda only scooped up Shepard’s mug and left without another word or gesture. 

As soon as the door closed behind Miranda, Shepard let herself fall forward, eyes covered, elbows balanced on the table. The weight of a single shadow fell on her back. 

*** 

 _We have to stop meeting like this_ was the first thing Shepard thought to say when she opened the door to her cabin and saw the woman waiting for her. Mercifully, the temptation to say it lasted only as long as it took for her door to close. She kept her eyes turned away from the helmet on her desk. 

“You believe,” said the woman. Her head moved in a slow arc, from shoulder to shoulder, before she paused and faced Shepard with the already-familiar lift of her chin.

Shepard couldn’t tell where the woman’s gaze focused, and the lack of a reference point made her itch. “Yeah,” she said, too heavily for sarcasm. “I guess I do.” When she passed the woman on her way to the couch, she waited for the chill to touch her face. None came, and she sank down into the cushions with a sigh. 

They regarded each other silently, until Shepard had to fist her hands in the side panels of her suit to keep herself from talking. 

“Five hours to the Citadel,” said the woman, by way of nothing. 

Shepard schooled her face into a blank mask and waited. _Why does it matter?_ she yelled in her head. _Give me something to work with!_

The woman didn’t continue. She stood, too still and quiet, with her hands clasped behind her back, watching, until Shepard’s frustration overpowered her. 

“Fine. I’ll bite. Five hours. Is that some kind of clue?” 

“An invitation,” the woman answered. 

Shepard took a deep breath and let the clenched muscles in her shoulders relax. “To what?”  

The woman’s mouth twitched. “To talk,” she said. Her mouth twitched again; this time, her face followed, constricting in what might have been pain. Shepard leaned away from her on reflex, but the expression passed and the woman was serene again. “To ask questions,” she said, her voice cracking on the last syllable. 

“I’ve got to ask? What’s stopping you from just telling me what I need to know?” _Other than nothing ever being that easy_ , Shepard thought. 

“Interference is forbidden.” The woman didn’t say the words so much as recite them. “You have to ask. I will answer what I can.” 

Shepard hadn’t expected that response; she had prepared herself for more stonewalling, more evasion, not an opening. “Well,” she said, briefly flummoxed, and rubbed her hands together as she considered.  

“Why are you here?” The words sounded just as hoary and cliched as she expected, but she refused to let herself cringe over them. 

The woman hesitated, and her face constricted again. Her throat worked. “To remember,” she said. “I remember everything.” 

 _Of, not in_. “Everything about the crew?” At the woman’s nod, Shepard leaned forward, her headache forgotten. An idea, dazzling and seductive, crawled its way to the surface. “Even me?”  

This time, the woman’s nod was reluctant, and the little spasm brushed her features before Shepard finished her next sentence.  

“You made me remember on Alchera. So you can do it again. Let me see the rest of what was in that room. The face --” Her voice broke on the last word, and the edges of the hole trembled. She was so close, the features almost clear --

“No.” When Shepard glared at her, the woman lifted her chin again. “It would be an interference.”  

Shepard let out a bleak laugh. “That didn’t stop you before, so this _rule_ isn’t as hard as you want me to think it is.” 

“There is a price,” said the woman, her calm almost maddening. “Memories were lost. That is...painful, for me. Forgetting is a little death.” She held out her hands to Shepard. Deep, raw cracks split the skin between her fingers, tracking paths over the backs of her hands to vanish under her armor. The wounds didn’t bleed, but the careful, meticulous way the woman held them spoke to her pain. 

“My God.” Shepard crossed the room, driven by horror and gut-deep, confused pity. She stopped herself just before she touched the woman. “Why?” she asked. “If it’s so painful, why did you do it?” 

 _Of all the questions, that’s the one I’ve chosen?_ She wanted to shake herself. A child’s question. Not _what’s the price of accepting you_ , not _what the hell is going on inside my head_ , but _why._

The woman clasped her hands at her chest. “They are your memories,” she said. “You will need them before the end. I wanted to give them back to you, despite...” She shrugged with one shoulder, and in the gesture, Shepard saw Ash, Kaidan, Liara, Tali, even Wrex. Even Garrus. “Despite the cost,” she finished.  

Shepard took a step away. “What do I owe you?” she asked. “What’s the price?”  

“From me? Nothing. I wanted to help.”  

Shepard laughed, and turned her back on the woman. She hugged herself. “It’s not that easy,” she said. “Nothing comes without a price tag attached. Look at this ship. Look at the _crew_. Cerberus brought me back. I still don’t know what they’re going to ask of me before this is over, but it’s not going to be just saving a bunch of colonies. I beat Sovereign, but now I have to deal with the Collectors. There’s _always_ a goddamn price. No one does anything for free.” 

“There are some who would help, for nothing. I am one of them.” 

“I’m talking about people,” Shepard snapped. “ _Real_ people, not some --” She turned around in time to see a flicker of hurt cross the woman’s face. “You know what I mean.”  

“Of course I do,” said the woman, flat and sly.  

Shepard couldn’t respond at first, only stare open-mouthed until the woman smiled with a brief curve of her lips. “Well-played,” Shepard said a moment later, when she could speak again. “I guess you would know.”  

The equivocal little shrug was the woman’s only response. Shepard bit her lip, where the flesh turned ragged and sore, and waited until she tasted blood to speak. 

“So there’s no price for the memories?” she asked. 

“Not from me,” said the woman. “I will not ask anything of you. I cannot help, not without this.” She let her hands fall to her sides, but didn’t clasp them behind her back. The gesture, Shepard realized, meant more than any cryptic half-answers. Those ruined hands were proof against hidden costs; whatever had to be paid, was paid, and not by her. Something for nothing. 

Of the bargains Shepard had made since she woke up, she wanted this one to be the purest. She had one last question to ask.  

“Should I want to remember?”  

The woman’s smile broke open her face; nothing but darkness filled the space behind her teeth. It was still the sweetest smile Shepard remembered seeing. 

“Oh, yes. Death was not all grief and waiting.”

“Well, that’s good to know.” Shepard ran shaking fingers through her hair. A dark thought pierced the beginning of her relief. “Wait -- you said memories were lost? Can you get them back?”

“No. What is gone is gone.” Yearning filled the woman’s voice.  

“Not always,” said Shepard. She felt hollowed out, scooped clean. “I wasn’t. And that’s the problem.” She tested her face for the chill, but only warm, pliant skin met her fingers.  

“You’re going to need a name,” she said when she looked up. The woman cocked her head. “If you’re real and sticking around, I can’t keep calling you _the woman_ in my head.” 

“I have a name. I call myself Nor.”  

“You’re serious. _Nor_?” Shepard laughed. “Of course you are. Two points for originality, eight points for being easy to remember. But,” she held up a hand before the woman responded. “But if you’re not very creative, I guess we only have ourselves to blame.”  

Nor gave her the one-armed shrug again. “It fits,” she said. “And I like it.”  

“It does.” Shepard studied her. “Not dead, nor alive. Poetic. Liara would like that.”  

“She would.” Nor tilted her head. “Will you find her?”  

“Liara? She doesn’t need finding. She’s on Ilium.” Shepard tapped her knee with a finger. “You know where they all are? The old crew?”  

“I do.” Nor frowned. “Shepard, I cannot --”  

“I know, you can’t tell me where they are. Can you tell me if they’re all right?”  

Nor considered in silence, then nodded. “They are all right. Alive and safe, for the most part.” 

“For the most part.” Shepard closed her eyes. “You’ll tell me if anything happens to them, right? That’s not interfering.” 

“It is not,” said Nor. “What is past is safe for me to tell.”  

The unspoken _as long as it’s too late for you to do anything about it_ hung in the air, trembling. Shepard groped for another question to clear away the low knot of dread in her gut, but Nor moved before she could speak, her head cocked as if she could hear some distant noise.  

“Nor?” The name moved unevenly through her mouth. “Nor, what is it?”  

“I need to go,” Nor answered. Her white gaze fell on Shepard’s face. “I will be back, later.”  

“Where could you have to go?” Shepard asked, bemused. “Why --” The realization slotted into place. “Who else can see you?” Nor shook her head. “Dammit, that’s not -- _who is it_?” 

Air rushed into the empty space left by Nor’s disappearance. Shepard punched the couch. “So much for straight answers.” She checked her clock display. Almost four hours to go until they got to the Citadel. 

Shepard held herself still, until the urgent drive to go pelting through the ship, peeling back the walls until she found Nor again, went quiet and faded away. The Vanguard approach wouldn’t work; she had to trust her new belief, and hope it bore up under the weight. 

Frustration aside, a few hours alone did give her a unique opportunity. 

She stretched out full-length on the couch and closed her eyes. _Breathe it out_. 

When her breathing came shallow and her pulse throbbed in her ears, she pushed downward, into the waiting dark. If the memories were hers, then she would drag them out, piece by bloody piece. 

***

 _She plunges into the center of her mind. She breaks the surface and falls again, through the body of her dead ship. The air in her lungs is the last she knows. Like an arrow, she speeds downward into fire and agony._  

 _In between the fire and the room, there is only desire, and fury._  

I fell. Show me more. Show me the sleeper. 

 _The memory peels itself open obediently, and the dim hallway forms around her. She imagines herself in the bedroom, standing next to the bed, and blinks. When she opens her eyes, she looks down and sees the rumpled covers, wrapped around the suggestion of a body made more  of angles than curves._  

_She sits down on the edge of the mattress and waits. There’s so much to see, to know. When she focuses, she hears the rush of blood as it circles through his body. His nervous system glows silver under his skin, protected by silken, corded muscles. He is open to her, down to the flutter of the tissue in his lungs when he inhales. It takes an effort to draw herself away and let hide and plates reappear over the subtle points of his anatomy, but when the familiar blue markings spread over his face, she doesn’t regret losing her intimate sight._

_He makes a small, frustrated noise, and rolls to his other side._  

_“Good morning, starshine,” she says, for no reason at all. She heard it a long time ago, in a song her mother used to sing. And oh, how he gleams under his skin, the hard merciless prickle of starlight._

_He opens his eyes. His hunter’s gaze fixes on her and blows wide. When he sits up, he’s clumsy and almost falls back to his pillows. She’s never seen him like this before, and it pierces her. His heart begins to race, and she forces herself not to peer inside to watch it._

_“Hey, Garrus,” says Shepard._

_“Shepard? What are you doing in my apartment?” He’s so honestly confused that she nearly looks away. He hasn’t heard yet, then. She steadies herself, and chooses the best words while he untangles himself from his sheets._

_“You’re about to get some bad news,” she says. Not gently, because she saves that for the lost, but as kindly as she dares. He’ll know soon enough. “Sorry about that.”_

_She means it._  

_His omni-tool chimes -- a new sound, which means he must have upgraded in the last few weeks, and that makes her angriest of all. She’s going to miss so much, but these details, the insignificant changes, she’ll miss them the most. She’s never going to know anything about anyone ever again._

_He makes that small noise again, the one she knows now means he isn’t quite awake, and then his mandibles draw tight to his face. His eyes are ice-hard when he looks at her._

_“Wait,” he says, and she would, but already the room is beginning to fade around her. The brightest places on his body are where his pulse glows at his wrists and neck. “You can’t -- what is this?”_

_A chill begins at her mouth and around her eyes. It spreads slowly, numbing her, as the colors leech out of the room._

_“Be safe out there, Garrus,” she says. He doesn’t quite believe what he’s read, or what he sees, but he doesn’t take his eyes off her face._

_Did he --?_

_Too late now. The colors are all gone, and a cold wind blows her away._

_***_

_She rises back to the surface of her mind._

No. No. There’s more. It doesn’t stop there. Show me. 

 _She tries to kick back down, where the memories --_ her _memories -- cluster like anemones, but a distant light pulls her up, through the low currents, and back into her body._

_She is cold. But she saw him, she saw --_

_***_

“-- Garrus,” Shepard gasped. The quiet network of his nerves glowed behind her eyes, even after she sat up, uneasily fixed in her body once more. 

 _Garrus._  

 


	29. Chapter 29

The Citadel looked much better than the last time she had seen it, but its essentials, Shepard was sure, hadn't changed at all. Too many people paying attention to everything other than where they were going, too many advertisements blaring from every direction. Shepard had to swivel to her left to avoid running into a curly-haired woman waving to someone in the distance.

"Oh, sorry, sorry! Excuse me!" The woman grinned from under her curls and moved to the side, still waving. Shepard caught the end of her double-take, as the recognition set in, and kept walking. The Alliance rumor mill, she knew, had already started grinding down the news of her reappearance, but she wanted to avoid having the rest of the galaxy weighing in, for as long as possible.

"Commander Shepard! Enter the password and receive a free gift!"

She swore under her breath and checked her omni-tool for hacks. Two years ago, there had been a rash of identity thefts through viruses embedded in public ad terminals; they scanned for unprotected omni-tools and lifted personal data, credits, even promising bits of code. Just her luck to have walked into one.

The firewalls on her omni-tool hadn't so much as quivered. Shepard stood still and let the crowd flow past her, keeping her head down and her hand on her omni-tool. A simple scan told her the ad terminal was clean of any viruses, so how -

"Commander Shepard, you're looking a little tired. Why not escape the crowd and see what exotic getaways Goto Travel Agency can offer you?"

 _Cute. Too cute._  Shepard grinned as she shut down the display and eased out of the line for the door.

"Enter your password to receive a free gift!" said a voice at her elbow. It came out of the ad terminal, where a hooded woman's face peered out at her. Shepard arched an eyebrow.  _A gift in the shape of a super-thief, I'm assuming._

"'What we call the beginning is often the end'," Shepard recited, and wondered, not for the first time, how she kept collecting poetry fanatics.

"Good to meet you, Commander Shepard. Kasumi Goto." The woman's eyes gleamed under her hood. "I'm a fan."

 _Hopefully not the Conrad Verner variety,_  Shepard thought, and regretted it immediately.  _Poor Conrad._

"Nice to meet you too, Ms. Goto."

"Please, just Kasumi is fine." Her smile gleamed low under the curve of her hood. "I don't like to stand on ceremony."

"Kasumi, then. You've been briefed, I take it?"

"I know what we're heading into. Well, as much as any of us know." Kasumi's image tilted its head. "There is one thing, Shepard -"

"If you've got issues with your fee, you can talk to my XO back on the  _Normandy_." Nothing could please Shepard more than to let Miranda deal with the paperwork, but Kasumi shook her head.

"It's not about a fee. Cerberus was more than generous, even by my standards, but they promised to help with me with a little errand."

Shepard clenched her hands to keep herself from pinching the bridge of her nose. Another bargain.

Off to Shepard's left, the curly-haired woman pointed in her direction. The turian at her side - the recipient of her grins and waves - gave Shepard a glance and started backwards. She didn't turn her head, and hoped they were the discreet type.

To Shepard's relief, the turian slipped his arm over the woman's shoulders, his mouth at her ear. She laughed and ducked her head, letting him lead her into the crowd. Just before they disappeared, Shepard saw the turian's hand curl around the ball of the woman's shoulder, his talons pricking against the heavy weave of her dress.

 _From Shanxi to this, in thirty years._ Shepard turned all her attention back to Kasumi, ignoring how a slight flush crept into the last stiff patches of skin on her cheeks.

"It's a simple job. I could do it alone, but I've been dying to know what you look like out of that armor. The vids never showed you in anything else." Kasumi's grin flashed again. "And I've got just the dress in mind for you."

"Dress?" At Shepard's raised eyebrow, Kasumi only smiled wider.

"Oh yes. You might not even need to use your gun. Don't worry, it'll still be fun."

Before Shepard could do more than nod - despite herself, the idea of a mission more likely to involve heels than biotics intrigued her - her omni-tool chimed.

"I'll let you get that," said Kasumi, with a generosity too ironic to be sweet. "Meet you back on the  _Normandy._ I've already moved all my things aboard."

"Of course you have," Shepard said, just before Kasumi's image wavered and disappeared. She opened her message display, expecting something from Miranda, and felt the muscles in her back tighten as she read the name of the sender.

So much for discretion. She hadn't entered the station proper yet, but the Alliance had eyes and ears everywhere.

***

The same silent network that passed along the news of her arrival made sure her progress up toward the Presidium went unimpeded by bureaucracy. Somewhere, Tevos was probably having a fit over letting Shepard move through the Citadel without an escort. For once, Shepard wouldn't blame her if she was. At best, she was a dangerous variable; at worst, a traitor and enemy.

 _I'm not either, I'm just me_ , said the plaintive voice in the back of her head. She shoved it down; it was so much easier to think of herself as a  _you_ , rather than  _I._

Shepard let herself slump down inside her armor, shoulders curved inward, head low with her eyes on the ground. If she'd had pockets, she'd have stuffed her hands inside. Even with a tactical cloak, real invisibility only lasted a few minutes, but acting like she wasn't worth a first look discouraged convinced most of the crowd . That anonymity lasted longer than invisibility, but she still wanted a tactical cloak.

How would Garrus react if she had one of those? She allowed herself a grin before she shoved the thought down, next to the  _I._ Amusing as the idea was - Garrus growling in frustration as yet another shot pinged off her barriers - letting herself think of him at all only distracted her. Her mind kept trying to fix itself on the small, jewel-like currents under his skin, and how he hadn't blinked at all after he read the news, and how -

 _Enough._ She had to stop now, or she would gnaw at the memory until she wore it to nothing but scraps. That would happen in any case, but she preferred to do it in private, not when an elevator ride and a few hallways lay between her and her destination.

She stepped into the elevator, alone, and closed her eyes.

"The Presidium. Human embassy."

"One moment, please," came the cool voice of the VI, and the elevator lifted off. Had it always been so slow? She opened her eyes and reread the message.

_Shepard,_

_If it's you and you're reading this, come to the human embassy when you get a chance._

_Anderson_

She planned to make Anderson her last stop, with all her other business concluded and her mind free, but Anderson's message was a summons, no matter how he phrased it.

 _They want to see how the prodigal daughter explains her absence_.  _And her new friends._

It felt like an ambush. If she had been able to visit Anderson on her own, she could have counted on a few surprised seconds to gauge the situation while he recovered. She didn't doubt he already knew she was alive. If the gossip from before she died was accurate, the Alliance only had a handful of moles in Cerberus, but the ones they had were very effective. Her advantage had lain in choosing how and when she revealed herself. Now, she had nothing, no advantages at all, only the hope that Anderson wouldn't have her hauled off to be debriefed and dissected.

_And that's just one scenario. Traitors get shot, don't forget, Shepard._

The elevator chimed and opened its doors. A pair of booted feet appeared at the edge of her vision.

"You have arrived at your destination," said the VI. The dark-suited person on the other side cleared their throat.

Shepard looked up, and barked a loose, startled laugh.  _It's an ambush, all right._ "Yes, I have," she said. "Hello, Kaidan."

***

"Anderson will be here in a moment," said Kaidan. He stayed near the door, doing his best to hide his shock and failing. Shepard knew his tells, and he ran through them all in order: rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand, holding her gaze a moment too long, the double-blink. There they were, as familiar as when she saw them every morning in the mess or in briefings. "He was called away at the last minute by Councilor Udina."

 _Udina_. Shepard rolled her eyes. "Will he be joining this meet-and-greet? Because I'm going to need something pretty strong to get through that without punching him in the throat." She tried not to sigh audibly when Kaidan didn't laugh and only gave her a stiff smile.

"Come on, Kaidan. Give me something to work with." When he met her words with a blank stare, she held up her hands. "Fine. We can wait in silence. I don't care." She turned away and headed for the balcony. She paused, waiting for the words to come, and shook her head.

Kaidan looked like he was holding his breath, and let it out in a gust when Shepard didn't say anything more. "That's it?" he said. "That's all you've got to say? Not  _sorry for not contacting you_ , not  _I'm alive_?"

"Kaidan -"

"I think I deserve an explanation," he said, biting off the ends of his words. He took extra care when he was angry to keep himself under control, and as far as Shepard knew, the painful enunciation was the only clue he couldn't hide. More of Vyrnnus' legacy, the part he couldn't shake, and dammit, she  _missed_  Kaidan, even as her anger rose.

"You and everyone else," she said. "Let me give you the condensed version. I  _was dead._  I've been awake, no,  _alive_ , for just over a week, and I've already got another suicide mission on my hands. So I'm sorry I haven't gotten around to checking in quite yet." She took a deep breath and smoothed her hands over her cheeks, testing her mouth for the chill without thinking. "I asked about you," she said, quieter. "As soon as I could, I asked. They told me your file was surprisingly well-classified, which as far as I'm concerned was just a polite way of telling me to fuck off. Besides, you moved on with your life. Two years is a long time."

"Not that long," said Kaidan. He folded his arms over his chest. "Not after what we went through. All of us. We all would have followed you, Shepard. We  _did_  follow you."

She nearly told him about Freedom's Progress and Tali, but held herself back.

"And now you're with Cerberus." Kaidan let go of any pretense of hiding and spat the words at her. "I thought you were Alliance all the way through."

 _Like you_ , Shepard thought.  _Go ahead and say it, Kaidan. I know you want to._

Kaidan just shook his head and folded his arms. "This isn't you," he said, after a long pause that made Shepard's stomach twist. "I don't know why you're with them, but it isn't you. The Shepard I knew never would have worked for Cerberus."

"The Shepard you knew died," she snapped. He flinched, and she pushed forward, knowing she'd regret it later, unable to help herself. "Remember the ship that did it? They're taking human colonies. As far as I'm concerned, I signed up to help humanity. And if the Alliance won't just because it's the Terminus, I will. And for the record," she added, coming down the steps to force her way into Kaidan's personal space, pleased when he took a step back, "I am  _not_  working for Cerberus. We have the same goals. The moment that changes, I'm out."

"Will you be able to get out?" Kaidan fired back. "Shepard -"

"If you're about to give me the  _I'm worried about you, Shepard_  speech, Garrus beat you to it."

Saying Garrus' name brought the ache back into her throat; instead of seeing the lights under his skin, she saw his back, smooth and impenetrable in his armor, as he worked endlessly at his console. She blinked the memory and the ache away.

"This is not how I wanted this to go," Kaidan murmured. Shepard looked up, but his eyes were far away, dark and unfocused. "I didn't believe the reports that said you were alive, but I hoped, and..." He trailed off with a shrug, the same gesture Nor used. Shepard wondered where he'd gotten hold of the reports, but stopped herself from asking.

"I haven't forgotten Kahoku," she said. "But I can't forget the colonists either, Kaidan."

He glanced up at her, and a small smile lifted the corners of his mouth. "That sounds like you," he said. "You and your suicide missions. Can't believe Garrus signed on for another one."

She thought of the way Garrus slumped against her on Omega, forgetting his exhaustion and disgust long enough to touch her, and how carefully he kept his distance now.

"Me neither," she said, and made herself be silent when her voice trembled on the last syllable. They stayed quiet for a long time before Kaidan spoke again.

"I'm glad to see you," said Kaidan. "Yeah, you're with Cerberus, and I've got a lot to say about that, but you already know what I'm going to say. It's just… the last time I saw you was right before we got hit." He closed his eyes, and Shepard saw the circles under his eyes before he opened them again. "Eating grapes in the mess and busting Liara's chops. As usual."

She snickered despite herself. "As usual, huh?"

"You were an  _ass_  to her, Shepard."

"She was  _insufferable_ , Kaidan. Well, sometimes."

That made him laugh, and Shepard stepped back to meet his gaze.

"It's good to see you too, Kaidan." She hesitated, debating whether or not to ask, before she smiled. "It'd be better to see you on the  _Normandy._  The new  _Normandy_. You could join me."

Kaidan shook his head. "No. I can't. I'm Alliance, Shepard. As long as you're working with Cerberus, I can't work with you."

Shepard hadn't expected him to say yes, but it still felt like a slap to hear the refusal. She nodded.

"Besides," said Kaidan, with something like slyness, "I've got my own assignment."

Shepard smirked. "You're a tease, Alenko. Just going to give me enough to get my attention and then play coy, right?"

"Pretty much," he answered.

"It's not going to work. I'm not going to ask."

"Good. I wouldn't be able to tell you, one way or another." His expression turned serious. "Shepard, I'm sorry I can't -"

"Don't apologize, Kaidan. It's good to know that integrity is still in place." She let her smirk fade into a smile. "Not going to lie and say it wouldn't be nice to have you on board. It's just a bunch of L3s."

Kaidan snorted. "Babies. Uh, no offense, Shepard."

"None taken." Shepard shifted her weight and tried to find a way to broach the silence, but how could she, when Cerberus blocked any way she had to make Kaidan open up to her?

Kaidan's omni-tool chimed. He glanced at it, his expression hardening, before he straightened and met her gaze.

"I've got to go," he said stiffly, and coughed. "Meeting."

"Anderson's on his way back, isn't he?" Dread curled low in her gut. "And he doesn't want you here."

"Ah, yeah." Kaidan sighed. "Shepard, I know there's more to say."

"There is, but it'll keep." She offered him what she hoped was an encouraging smile. It felt cold as it stretched her mouth, and she kept her hands fisted at her sides to keep from testing her skin. "I'll see you soon, Kaidan. Take care."

She held out her hand to catch his, but he gripped her shoulder instead, and squeezed.

"Be safe," he said. "And watch your back. Even you can't come back twice."

 _Wrong_ , she thought, with a sudden, giddy urge to laugh rocking through her.  _Not sure how I managed it, but I did._

"I might surprise you," she said, and they laughed together until the door opened to let Anderson in.

***

Shepard arrived on the Citadel still half a ghost, nothing more than a rumor, and left restored to the world of the living — at least as far as the ID systems were concerned. She passed out through the doors to the docking without so much as a whisper from the C-Sec officer on duty, thanks to Bailey's button-pushing. He gave her a terse nod as she passed his desk, without pausing his dressing-down.

 _Consummate professional_ , Shepard thought, with a nod back. The crowd in the docking bay had thinned since she first entered the station; only a few asari and a lone batarian milled under the skylights. Just beyond the bulky outline of a passenger frigate, she saw the  _Normandy_ 's hull, dim and shadowy.

She paused to lean against the railing and watch the slow passage of ships moving between the arms of the Citadel. From this distance, the ships farthest away barely seemed to be moving.

Almost three years ago, she had stood nearby, with the  _Normandy_  looming next to her, still reeling from being chosen as a Spectre, listening to Anderson tell her the  _Normandy_  was hers. A ship for a Spectre.

How appropriate she came back to the new  _Normandy_  as a Spectre once again.

***

Shepard had enough time to take a shower, change, and take the elevator down to the CIC before Miranda caught her, a stack of datapads cradled in her hands.

"Please, tell me they don't all need my attention," said Shepard. She took a resigned step back into the elevator, Miranda following. "You're my XO, you deal with it."

"I've narrowed them down considerably, Commander." Miranda moved to Shepard's left and held out the top datapad. "Most of them just need your authorization: requisitions, licenses, that sort of thing."

"And the rest? Crew quarters."

"I wanted to discuss our plan for recruiting Jack." Miranda tapped her fingernail on the edge of a datapad. "There have also been several more sightings of those figures."

Shepard nodded, though inside she cringed at the thought of talking about  _spirits_ , when her head was already full of Nor and Garrus —  _Garrus sleeping_. She expected Nor to appear out of whatever ether she called home, but the shadows in the elevator stayed where they were, unmysterious, uninteresting. They finished the rest of the ride in silence.

A small group of crewmembers looked up from their meals as Shepard and Miranda passed. One started to salute, but a glare from Miranda cut him off before his hand got higher than shoulder-level. Shepard smirked.

She saw the door of the main battery and couldn't stop a shiver; she had kept the memory safely sectioned off from the rest of her while she was on the Citadel, aside from her slip with Kaidan; now it pressed against her, whispering. The hole in her head stayed quiet, no beckoning twitches or rattles, and she turned away from the memory, away from the battery.

 _Soon,_ she promised herself. The work came first. Her mystery had to wait.

The plaintive — and yes,  _selfish_  — voice in her head asked  _why_ , but she ignored that too.

Once inside Miranda's office, she took the seat across from the desk and held out a hand. "Let's start with Jack. Any more intel on the  _Purgatory_?"

"Zaeed's information is accurate. It's run by the Warden Kuril he mentioned — long time Blue Suns, but before that he was in law enforcement on Palaven. Solid career, but nothing too impressive."

Shepard hummed absently, scanning the datapad. "And barefaced." She blinked when she

"Yes. I did some research, and —"

"It's a slang term. They use it for politicians, and for people who aren't quite trustworthy. No affiliations with something greater than yourself." Shepard glanced up and smiled over the table. "I've known a turian or two. Their markings may look like just pretty colors, but there's a lot wrapped up in them."

"Yes, that is what I was led to understand. So Officer Vakarian's statement was a warning, of a sort."

"Of a sort," said Shepard, reluctant to let Garrus get pulled into the conversation before she could parse what, exactly, she had remembered. "Has there been anything on Kuril's end to raise suspicion? Other than the fact that he's a merc, and running a prison ship for profit."

Miranda made a noise that almost passed for a laugh. "On the surface? No. He's been polite, forthcoming, prompt. A little surprised that Cerberus wanted to deal with him, but equable enough once he saw what we were willing to pay. He made a token attempt to bargain, but I got the impression he'll be more than happy to be rid of Jack. What he didn't say — what I found out through other channels — is that Kuril likes to tell governments that he'll release his prisoners on their homeworlds, without warning, if they don't pay."

Shepard looked up from the words  _Subject Zero_. "How many times has he followed through?"

"Twice." Distaste, deepening to contempt, flashed across Miranda's face. "No one's tried to call his bluff since. The results were…"

"Right." Shepard handed her the datapad. "No need for details. I've got a good imagination. So this is the man we're dealing with. It concerns me he didn't try to bargain more."

Miranda tucked the datapad to the side and clasped her hands on the desk. "We were exceedingly generous, Commander. He had no reason to complain."

"No, but he knows what Cerberus is, and he's cagey enough to know you wouldn't start with your highest bid. However much you paid for Jack, you were authorized to double it, at least, weren't you?"

"Yes," said Miranda. She looked like a woman coming to a very disagreeable conclusion. "You think it may turn into a ransom situation?"

"It's a possibility." Shepard leaned back and crossed her legs. "We  _are_  valuable commodities. If Cerberus was willing to pay  _that_ much for Jack, Kuril would go into raptures over how much they'd pay to get us back."

"Point taken," said Miranda. "We could take Zaeed with us, and Jacob. Having Zaeed along may cause friction, but that alone may be enough to dissuade them."

"True, but bringing along that much firepower also lets Kuril know we're expecting trouble, and we may not get Jack at all. Better to go with the original plan, just you and me. If he's friendly, it'll keep him that way. I'd rather keep violence to a minimum on this run."

"Commander, I really think it would be best to bring along a third squad member. Jacob, at least."

"Three biotics walk onto a prison ship? No. Aside from sounding like the opening to a terrible joke, it'll look like we're throwing down a gauntlet. Besides, he doesn't have any tech — we'd be better off taking Garrus, if anyone." Shepard ran her fingers along the seam of her leggings. "And I'd rather get a little more distance from Omega before I bring him along to a party with the Blue Suns."

"There's Mordin."

"I want him focused on the counter-measure for the seeker swarms. If this goes sideways, I don't want him trapped on the  _Purgatory._  It's just going to be us, Miranda. With luck, we'll be able to play nice and get Jack out without any problems."

"Understood, Commander." Miranda picked up her last datapad, but Shepard held up a finger.

"One last thing before we move on, Miranda." She held Miranda's gaze. "Tell me about Subject Zero."

The conversation about Subject Zero lasted well into the night cycle. By the time Shepard was ready to leave Miranda's cabin, she felt wrung out and dry, brittle as old glass, and wanted nothing more than to burrow under her covers and sleep for a week.

"I think we're finished here," she said. "We've planned for everything, including a full-scale prison riot, and with any luck we won't have to deal with one of those. Let's wrap it up."

"We haven't discussed the second report," Miranda protested.

"I'd like to table that discussion until we gather more intel, actually. Our focus needs to be on the Collectors." Shepard folded her hands on her knee. "I take it all sightings are still centered around Omega?" Miranda nodded, and Shepard stood. "Then we wait for them to show up anywhere else — unless you've seen one of them here on the  _Normandy,_ " said Shepard, with a carelessness that didn't match the reckless surge of her pulse as she waited for Miranda's response. Miranda simply nodded and bent her head to her terminal.  _One down, over fifty to go._

"Good. Get some sleep, Miranda."

"Yes, Commander." Miranda looked up from her terminal and gave Shepard a small, but warm smile. "I neglected to say so earlier, but congratulations on your reinstatement."

Shepard sighed. "Thanks. Though I'm not sure how grateful I am that you hacked into Alliance comm channels."

"Neither I nor EDI hacked into Alliance channels," said Miranda. Before Shepard could apologize, Miranda smiled again, almost all her teeth on display. "The councilors have terrible security protocols," she added, in a sweet aside.

"Does privacy mean  _nothing_  to you?" Shepard sighed again when Miranda gave her a look that clearly read  _you are saying this to a woman who has had her hands inside your body_. "Nevermind. That's my stupid question for the day. Good night, Miranda."

"Good night, Shepard."

***

On the edge of sleep, Shepard felt the small shift in the air next to her bed. She rolled over, fully awake. "Hello, Nor," she whispered.

Nor's eyes glimmered in the low light. She perched on Shepard's desk, legs swinging like a little girl's. "Hello, Shepard," she said, smiling. "You saw Kaidan."

Shepard sat up. The sheets pooled around her hips, and the skin on her bare arms raised in gooseflesh as the cool air hit them. She hugged herself, hands around her elbows. The skin weave, finally, felt like normal skin. "I did. He's good. We're good, I think."

She hadn't asked the question, but Nor nodded, radiating calm happiness. "You are good," she said. "He is happy you talked, though still angry. Confused."

"I could have told you that," said Shepard. "It's Kaidan. Once he decides to feel a certain way, it takes him forever to shift it."  _But since it's Cerberus, he may never._  She rubbed her eyes. "Are you here for a reason, Nor?"

"I just came to visit."

"While I was sleeping?" Nor's nod came without hesitation. "Well, that's creepy, but it's not like I have any secrets from you anyways." She laid down again, curling on her side so she could still see Nor. "You're back from wherever you went?"

"I did not go far," said Nor. "I stayed on the ship."

"Going to give me any hints about who you saw?" Nor shook her head, and Shepard rolled her eyes. "Right. I expected that. No interference. So that means you won't tell me about your friends on the other ships either, right?"

Nor hesitated. The corners of her mouth turned down, tugging at the thick waves of scar tissue on her cheeks. "I should not interfere in what you will remember."

"See, that's bullshit," said Shepard, around a yawn. "Because I'm going to  _remember_ this conversation, the one you're  _in_ , and yet you're just sitting there. I'll remember that."

Nor stayed silent. Shepard groaned and rolled onto her back. "I don't need this," she said. "I've got a mission to run, and whatever's in my head can't distract me from — you said  _should not._ "

"I did," said Nor. She sounded relieved that Shepard finally caught on. "Things are changing, now that you remember."

"Now that I remember? You mean, what I did earlier?" Shepard sat up, the gooseflesh spreading to her back and sides. "What did that change?"

Nor opened her mouth to reply, then shut it, then opened it again. "You came back," she said, finally. "That changed everything. Things could move more freely. Things could — come through."

"Like you," said Shepard, feeling very small. She pulled her legs to her chest.

"Like me," said Nor. "Before, I waited until one of my crew lay dying, and then I slipped through. I took the last breath from them, I took the last of their pain, and I carried them onward. My life…" She paused, and made a soft, wet sound that might have been a laugh or a sob. "All I did was wait. I watched, and I changed as all of you lived and added memory to me. I am the sum total of all of you, dead and alive. And I remember everything. That is all we ever did, until you." Nor shifted on the desk, leaning forward to look at Shepard with eyes like white pits. "What kind of  _will_  do you have?" she asked Shepard.

"I don't know what you —"

"You  _came back_ ," said Nor, astonished and wistful. "Once is almost an impossibility. How? How did you do it? Why?"

"I wanted to," said Shepard bleakly. She felt the tides of fury and desire move in her again, not echoes but real emotion, as bright and powerful as when she rested in the spaces between the fire and the room. "I came back to help — to help Garrus."

The words disappeared, like a stone into black water, as soon as she spoke them. She closed her eyes, her throat aching.

"Yes." Nor sighed. "You did. Thank you, my Shepard."

"Wait." Shepard's eyes flew open. "Wait. It's him, isn't it? He can see you — dammit, Nor!"

Her desk was empty. Shepard turned her face to the pillow.  _Give me a taste, and I'll hunt down the rest of the story. I won't be able to help it, I have to know. Very clever, Nor._

Shepard needed sleep. Every muscle in her body begged for it, but she had no intention of letting herself dream. She wanted to remember, but the hole in her mind stayed closed, as smoothly as if it had frozen over. No matter how hard she beat at the surface, she couldn't dive in. She fell into a fitful doze in the hour before her alarm went off, still trying to break through.

***

Over the next three days, both Nor and Garrus avoided Shepard. Garrus stayed silent in the morning briefings, always last to arrive and first to leave, watching her unblinking through the star map.

Nor simply didn't appear.

And the hole in her head —  _no_ , thought Shepard, as she stood in the shower, fists clenched, exhausted from trying to batter her way inside _, it's not a hole, it's a well, and I know what's inside, let me in, it's_ mine — remained shut, covered and silent.

The marks on her shoulders gleamed under the water. She covered them with her hands and closed her eyes.

_Give me something. Give me my memories back. Let me understand. Let me feel at home in my skin again._

_Please._

If an answer came, she didn't hear it. Her body felt like ill-fitting clothes; her mind stayed ice-locked.

_Please._

***

The night before she and Miranda left for the  _Purgatory,_  unable to sleep and slowly wearing a path from her bed to her terminal as she paced, Shepard gave in and called for Nor, her frustration overpowering any caution.

"If you're trying to piss me off, it's working. You want me to remember? Then you're going to have to give me a shove, because this isn't working with me on my own." She tried not to focus on what Miranda or the Illusive Man would think of her shouting to herself, alone in her room.

Nor didn't come.

Shepard gnawed at her lip, the muscles in her back so tight they twitched, and dug her workout clothes out of the bottom of her closet. They clung to her hips and waist, tight as skin, highlighting where new muscle bulked out her form. She had too raw-boned a figure to look like a proper Adept, who burned off calories too quickly to replace, and tended toward the deceptively-willowy. Vanguards generally carried more muscle, pound for pound, than anyone except Soldiers, and her body had started to reflect that, in infinitesimal ways. She liked the new broadness to her shoulders, how they finally balanced out the swell of her hips, and the sleek concave curve of her belly as it slipped up toward her ribs.

The pleasure she took in her appearance passed quickly, but while it lasted, it gave her the first small accord between herself and her body. Now that her scars had begun to fade, she didn't have to force herself to look in the mirror in the morning. She looked almost as she had on the SR-1: sharp-chinned, with a crooked nose and wide, cold eyes under arched brows. The only thing that saved her from looking like she had been carved from milky stone was the soft, reluctant curve of her mouth, more suited for smiling than frowning.

She tested her smile in the mirror: no teeth, just a slow lift at the corners, higher on one side. Everything in her face softened around the smile, and the woman looking back at her from the mirror glowed briefly, a light moving under her skin.

Lights under skin — like at the wrists, and neck, hidden by mandibles and soft hide —

 _No, don't you think about it._ Shepard caught herself before she fell into the warm cocoon of Garrus' room. His  _bedroom_. The one he abandoned when he left for Omega. How long had the smell of his sweat haunted the room?

 _Very funny_ ,  _Shepard._ Haunted _. A little on-the-nose, even for you._  She grimaced at herself in the mirror, showing her teeth, and left her cabin. She kept her mind blank on the elevator ride down, stretching carefully, testing her healing scars for dangerous weak spots. The gash on her thigh throbbed when she prodded it, but she seemed to be past the point where her skin would tear without warning.

She stepped into the workout room, shaking out her arms, and stopped in the doorway. Garrus stood to the left of the door, his back to her, one weight curled in a fist as he lifted his arm. He wore a loose, sleeveless tunic over a pair of leggings cut to accommodate his spurs, and his feet were bare. She had never seen him so undressed —  _not while I've been alive_ , she thought, and flushed as she imagined him in his sheets, bare to the waist, without even his visor to mask his features.

He started to turn as the door opened, and went still as soon as he saw her. Shepard wondered if he looked as stunned as she felt, and tried to imagine what she looked like to him: dressed in leggings and a tank top, her hair loose around her face.

"Garrus," she said, after they stared at each other in stunned silence. "I didn't think anyone else would be using the room."

He blinked, and shook himself. With exaggerated care, he set the weights back in their slots and turned away from her. The plates on his shoulders caught the overhead lights. Shepard breathed in through her nose and caught the edge of his sweat, clean and sweet and so very  _Garrus._

"That was my thinking," he said. "Come down when I'm not likely to disturb anyone."

"Has the crew been giving you any trouble?" she asked, mentally cringing.  _Very smooth, Shepard._

He waved a hand near his waist, dismissing her clumsy concern. "They're fine, Shepard. No one's been anything but polite. Some of them even seem impressed. I think I gained some leverage being on the team to take down Saren."

She hummed. Garrus cocked his head, a sudden flare of interest in his gaze, but he stayed silent. "It's a hell of a resume-builder," she said, and let herself grin when he huffed laughter.

"You could say that. Though C-Sec was…"

"Was what?"

"The same as always," he said. He turned around and nodded. "I'll let you have the room, Shepard."

"You don't have to go," she said, and offered him her grin. "The room's big enough for two. I'll just be running laps."

"Thanks, but I'm finished." He stepped around her toward the door. "Enjoy your run, Shepard."

"Garrus?"

He paused at the sound of his name, but didn't turn around. His back rose up in front of her, impenetrable and cold. Her questions faded; how was she supposed to say  _hey, seen any white-eyed ladies running around?_ How was she supposed to say  _so, remember that time I showed up in your apartment after I died? You do remember that, right?_

_Do you?_

"If you're up to working out, then I could use you after this next mission. I'll check in with Chakwas when I get back. Doesn't feel right without you watching my back."

_Coward. Ask him. Push him. It's what you do._

Garrus nodded. "I'll be ready when you need me, Shepard."

She hummed again, and he shivered, the movement almost hidden by the folds of his tunic. "Good. Talk to you later, Garrus."

He hesitated. Shepard stifled a sigh and turned to the workout room, stretching out her leg, and almost missed what Garrus said.

"You know I've got your six, Shepard, right?"

She let go of her foot and faced him. Something echoed under his voice, some low not-quite tremor. "I know you do," she said, a small, private smile stealing over her face. Garrus smiled back, the expression gone before it could warm her, and left.


	30. Chapter 30

"Well," said Miranda. She stepped over a body, then another, looking mildly annoyed - which, Shepard had to admit, was better than panic.

"We planned for this, Miranda," she replied, checking the clips in her shotgun again.

"I thought you were being facetious when you started talking about a prison riot, Commander." Miranda's omni-tool glowed as she knelt to bypass a jammed lock. "I suppose I'll have to pay more attention to what I think are warped jokes, in case there's a plan hidden inside."

"I plan for everything, but always anticipate the worst," Shepard replied. When the door creaked open, she swung through, shotgun balanced against her shoulder. She swept the room with a glance: empty, except for a burned body underneath a pile of collapsed crates. "We're clear. How much further till we hit outprocessing?"

"We're still two floors above it, and the most direct route is sealed off. It's venting into space, so we'll have to find another way." Miranda typed on her omni-tool and grimaced. "The next best way takes us through Cell Block D."

"Let me guess," said Shepard. "That's where the fighting is worst?"

"Worst of the worst," Miranda confirmed. "There is another way, through —"

"No, we've got a time limit and a hull breach to deal with. If Cell Block D is the fastest route to Jack, then that's the one we take." Shepard paused at the door, considering as Miranda ran through another bypass. "How's your close quarters combat?"

Miranda glanced up, brow furrowed. Shepard braced for sarcasm, for an eyeroll, but Miranda surprised her with the completely unexpected: candor.

"It's adequate," said Miranda carefully. "I would be better at a distance, stripping their shields and armor."

"Don't worry about the armor, I've got incendiary ammo for that. If you can take care of their shields and any pylons they've got running, I'd appreciate it. I can handle CQC."

"Understood, Shepard." The bypass chimed as it completed. "Cell Block D is one floor down."

"You've got a scan that'll pick up heavy mechs, right?"

"Already running. If any activate, we'll know."

Shepard nodded. "Then it'll be your show till its shields are gone. That happens, I'll keep everyone off your back while you whittle it down."

"Appreciated." Miranda stood and unholstered her pistol. "I still think a third squad member would have been useful."

"Useful, yes," said Shepard. "But much less fun." She gave Miranda her wolf's smile, wondering if she heard the low rhythm of the battle-spell.

After a moment, Miranda returned the smile with a thin one of her own, her teeth gleaming. The restless calculation in her gaze stayed in place, but a new consideration appeared alongside it. Trust, perhaps? "Another joke, Shepard?"

"Just the truth," said Shepard. "Shall we?"

Miranda gestured at the door. "You first." 

***

Shepard sighed and stretched out her legs. Her right thigh ached; she had strained the muscles in her final run for the shuttle, shouting at Miranda and Jack to  _run, dammit, get the lead out!_  The skin hadn't torn, but she planned on coating the area with medi-gel before she crawled into bed, just to be safe.

"We've acquired Jack," said Miranda. "The mission was a success."

"Then why do you sound like you're heading to a funeral, Miranda?" Shepard rolled her fingertips over her amp. For a first run, she'd been pleasantly surprised by the lack of a delay before the spike.

"It was not my intention to allow her access to  _classified_  Cerberus files," Miranda snapped. She composed herself an instant later, but two spots of color flared high on her cheekbones. "You handed her a lit fuse, Shepard."

"I got her on the squad, Miranda, which I was given carte blanche to do." She gave Miranda a steady look. "You may not like it —"

"I  _don't_  like it. Shepard, I understand that you were operating under stress and time constraints, but there had to be another option for getting Jack on the  _Normandy_. A better option, one that didn't hand her all the ammunition she needs to cut a bloody swath through Cerberus."

"She won't," Shepard let her hands fall back to her lap. "She's on my crew, she's my responsibility, and I'll be the one to ensure she's focused on the Collectors."

"How?" Miranda tapped a finger on her desk. Shepard watched the motion, fascinated. Miranda glared at the offending finger and clasped her hands on her desk. "She has no respect for authority, and even your biotic powers don't stand a chance against hers."

"She respects the fact that I followed through," said Shepard. "Jack expected a letdown. When she didn't get one, it threw her off-script. Now that I have her attention, I can get her focused on the real fight."

"If you can," said Miranda.

"I can." Shepard sat forward. "I didn't lie to her, Miranda. Jack'll want to see if I keep it up. It'll keep her interested."

"And will you? Lie to her?"

Shepard shook her head, and Miranda favored her with another small, considering smile.

"No, you won't. You don't lie."

"No. That's the one line I won't cross. I'll obscure, I'll hide, I'll evade, but I won't outright lie. Truth is armor, if you're brave enough to use it. Every lie weakens you. They make you forget." The chill settled around Shepard's mouth, a silent reminder that she had already forgotten enough. "The truth has to come out sometime. Don't you want to be the one who chooses when?"

Miranda tapped her finger again. "So you've put yourself in a position of power by giving Jack the information. She owes you, now."

"It's not about being owed." Shepard closed her eyes for a brief moment. "It's about being believed. When the time comes, I need to be able to trust everyone on this squad. I can't have that trust unless they believe me when I tell them the truth."

Miranda watched Shepard's face with narrowed eyes, the calculation warring with the new consideration. Not trust, Shepard decided, not yet, but closer to it than she hoped. 

***

Chakwas barely spared Shepard — and the krogan leaning on her — a glance before sighing and pulling up her omni-tool display.

"Another krogan, Shepard? The last one didn't give you enough trouble?"

"Would you believe me if I said he was friendly? Don't touch that," Shepard added, as the krogan reached out toward Chakwas' console.

"Fine," he rumbled, and pressed his hand back to the hole in his side. The bleeding had slowed down considerably, but a few thick, sluggish drops slipped out through his fingers. "I don't see why I have to come here anyways. I'll heal just fine on my own."

"Probably," said Shepard. She shoved him onto an exam table and leveled a stare at him. "But Okeer wasn't exactly clear on what makes a perfect krogan, and I'm not taking any risks. Besides, I'm the one who shot you. I'd feel bad if I just left you belowdecks. Chakwas will do a few scans, apply some medi-gel, and then you're free to go."

The krogan —  _Grunt_  — snorted, but let Chakwas complete her scans in peace. He stayed silent even through the medi-gel application, but as soon as Chakwas had shut down her omni-tool, he gave Shepard a stare of his own.

"Got anything to eat on this ship? I'm starved."

Shepard smothered a laugh and laid a hand on Grunt's shoulder. "Yeah, there's food. Mess Hall's right outside.  _No touching anything but food._  Got it?"

"Got it," said Grunt, aggrieved but agreeable. Chakwas waited a beat after he left before turning to Shepard.

"Shepard."

"Don't say it, doc." Shepard rubbed her eyes. "It's been a long day, and the sooner it's over, the better." Her hair smelled like burning oil, and her ribs ached a warning in counterpoint to her thigh. "Mind giving my amp a look? Feels loose."

"Loose?"

"There were…many krogan." She turned and bent her head. Chakwas' cool gloved fingers probed the skin around her amp; Shepard winced when they hit a sensitive spot and a sharp crackle whipped through her head.

"Ah, yes, it is loose. I can adjust it, but you'll need to lay low on the biotics for a day or two, until your body acclimatizes again."

"Got it. When are you going to —  _shit!_ " A wasp stung her at the base of her skull, once, twice, as Chakwas' fingers twitched. "Shit," she murmured again, and blinked away tears. "A little warning would have been nice, doc."

"It would only have hurt worse," said Chakwas. "Go  _easy_  for the next few days, Shepard, until you're sure of the spike again. How does it feel now?"

Shepard focused on the blue wave. When she reached for it, the energy responded eagerly — too eagerly, leaping down her spinal cord and into her arms. "It's a little unsteady," she said. "I'll go easy, scout's honor."

"See that you do. Now, while I have you, I want to run a few tests."

"What kind of tests?"

"Nothing too invasive. I want to get a look at your implants, to see how they're holding up. You are rather rough on yourself." Chakwas' omni-tool blazed again, and Shepard leaned against the exam table, closing her eyes. Her stomach rumbled in the distance, unconcerned that the only meal in her future would be comprised of reconstituted, anonymous  _somethings_ , and her mind wandered, pleasantly empty.

_The room reeks. Something died here, long enough ago to fill the air with its cloying decay, but she can't find it in the dark. She brushes her hand along the wall, searching for the light sensor. When she finds it, the lights flicker to half-strength, then gradually strengthen, until the apartment appears out of the gloom. She nods, satisfied, and shuts the lights down again. The generator needs to be checked, but that can wait._

_It's nothing more than a squatters' nest, long-abandoned, but it's well-hidden. No one comes down here. She made sure of that, when she pulled herself out of —_

_No. She shakes her head, and looks up toward the ceiling. There isn't much time, and she needs to be sure of this place. She'll only have one chance._

_She tells herself to go to the balcony, and finds herself there an instant later, air rushing away from her. It's an excellent vantage point for snipers — or simply for one who watches. Once the doors to the tunnels are sealed and the locks are encrypted again, it'll be as safe as Omega gets._

" _Time to move," she tells herself. Somewhere, far above her, there is a light, beating with his pulse. She closes her eyes, and follows the light._

The doors to Medbay slid open, loud enough to break the memory into scattered pieces. Gravity reasserted itself over her upward flight, reminded her body of its weight, and the dim outline of the apartment faded as Medbay's edges sharpened. Shepard snatched at the memory, but it faded, out of reach, into the quiet well in her head. Her mind protested the interruption —  _let me see what comes next, it's mine_ — but Garrus stood in the doorway to Medbay, one hand holding the doors open. His mouth worked, straining the bandage. Chakwas stood to the side, forgotten, as Shepard faced Garrus, trying to breathe while two worlds tried to reconcile themselves . Omega, the  _Normandy_ : where was she?

Omega, she was on Omega. Dim, filthy Omega. She had to move quickly, or the Blood Pack would find Garrus before she did.

She blinked. The last of Omega disappeared, and she anchored herself in the Medbay, where everything smelled like clean antiseptic and metal.

_Keep it straight. You know where you are._

"Shepard? Are you all right?" Chakwas held out a hand, not quite touching Shepard's elbow.

"I'll be fine," she said. "Just had a weird moment." Garrus shifted minutely, but stayed poised in the doorframe.

Chakwas nodded and let her hand drop. "All the more reason to not push yourself. Now, you know the routine. High-calorie snacks, and sleep."

"Got it." Shepard pushed off the table and gave Garrus a smile. "Feeling all right, Garrus?"

"Just checking in," he said, in a voice the color of shale. "Making sure it's all in order." He gestured at his face, the bandage and purpled scars.

Shepard nodded, humming. "Don't let me hold you up."

"Of course." Chakwas waved Garrus toward an exam table; when Shepard passed him, their hands brushed, and the world lurched sideways. Shepard caught herself against the doorframe before she staggered, the stink of Omega welling up through a crack in the clean, bright room around her. A vast pressure squeezed the air out of her lungs, as what  _had been_ and what  _was_  tried to force themselves into the same space.

Chakwas, with her back to Shepard, hadn't noticed her stumble, but Garrus had, and she felt his gaze on her back, right between her shoulder-blades. 

***

Shepard had an idea — a vague one, but attractive — that the explosion of air that accompanied Nor's arrivals was strictly for her benefit, and not any natural occurrence. She found herself listing for the sound in the shower, on her solitary runs, even in the middle of the mess, anything to prove that Nor wasn't simply a symptom of her resurrection.

When the sound stayed absent as the days piled on each other, Shepard forgot to listen. Other things needed her attention: her fractious squad; her mission; her mind. All three needed constant, delicate supervision, and while Miranda's quiet efficiency kept the first two on track, the third presented more of a challenge.

"You tested me for memory loss, right after the Lazarus Station," she said, during one of the quiet evening briefings in Miranda's cabin. "Why?"

Miranda handed Shepard another datapad. "Our work was unprecedented, Shepard," she said. "Resurrections have been attempted before, but not without significant damage to the subject, even without the trauma you had gone through. Time fought us, every step of the way. There were delays in retrieving you, and when you finally arrived…well." Miranda clasped her hands in front of her, a wry tilt to her mouth. "I had my doubts that we could bring you back, I admit it. And when I had to wake you prematurely, I was concerned that you would suffer side effects."

"You thought I'd go catatonic, or worse."

"It was a possibility. I had to consider all options." Miranda hesitated, her finger tapping a knuckle. "For what it's worth, Shepard, I apologize if I seemed callous. There wasn't time for delicacy."

"I understand that, Miranda, and I'm not fishing for an apology. I suppose I passed muster?"

"More than," said Miranda, the wry smile warming a fraction before disappearing. "You  _are_  you, Shepard. Of that I have no doubt. The test I gave you on the shuttle was merely the last stage of ensuring your memory and personality were intact. I had every reassurance from the team that you would recover with no lasting damage or missing memories."

 _Your team was wrong, but not through any fault of their own. How could they know what was going on while you were rebuilding? Even I don't know the half of it._ Shepard skimmed the datapad — another requisition request, nothing that required her real attention, and stopped herself when she started to gnaw on the inside of her lip. She needed to break the habit.

"Do you have a reason to be concerned, Shepard? I'd be more than happy to test for damage."

"Can't resist the chance to get your toy back, can you?" Shepard laughed and approved the requisition request. "No, there's nothing from before I died that's missing. Everything up to when I blacked out is still there, not that I'm digging for it. Let me know where I can send a thank-you card to the team."

"Most of them died on the station, thanks to Wilson." Miranda's mouth thinned. "The chief neurologist , Dr. Gaiden, escaped , and only because he was off-station at the time."

"Ah," said Shepard. She let the silence hang between them, judging the thaw between her and Miranda, and decided to risk asking. "Do you know why Wilson did it?"

Miranda's mouth thinned again, before she gave Shepard a sliver of a smile. There was no warmth in the expression, just teeth and cold, perfect lines. "No," she said. "The matter is being investigated. Thoroughly."

Shepard nodded. "I said it before and I meant it then, but I'm sorry, Miranda. Whatever I think of Cerberus, none of them deserved to die like that."

"No," said Miranda, with surprising heat. "They didn't." She restrained herself with a barely-visible shiver. "But they understood what they were doing, and the risks entailed. The crew understands that too."

"Do they?" Shepard leaned back in her chair and linked her gloved hands over her knee. "It's one thing to be told you're on a suicide mission, but when it hits — and it will, it's a question of when — there can't be anything holding them back. They need to be committed. Your Illusive Man had that much right."

"The crew is ready, Shepard. The squad, however —"

"You worry about keeping the crew focused. The squad is my responsibility. Whatever needs to be done to get them focused will get done." Shepard smothered a sigh. "If this is you trying to broach the subject of Jack again, we've been over this, Miranda."

"It's not about Jack, Shepard. It's about Officer Vakarian."

"What about him?" Shepard held Miranda's gaze until the other woman looked away.

"While I don't doubt he's physically ready for any challenge, I'm concerned that mentally, he's not yet begun to process what happened to his friends on Omega."

"They were more than his friends," said Shepard, her heart clenching at the memory of the solemn, ordered lines of bodies.  _That could have been my squad. It_ was _my squad. Oh, Ash, I'm so goddamn sorry._

She breathed slowly through her nose, and forced her hands to loosen their steely grip on each other. "Garrus had that squad for two years. He spent more time with them than he did on the first  _Normandy_. They were closer to family than subordinates."

Miranda watched her with a careful, blank look, the same look she shared with Jacob after the three of them had entered Archangel's base. Shepard held the gaze, her features neutral, until Miranda nodded.

"That's not hard to imagine, but he hasn't dealt with his grief."

"People deal in different ways. And no, he will not speak to Chambers, unless he wants to. I appreciate your concern, but I know Garrus. When the time comes, he won't let anything get in the way of the mission." Her throat ached. Of course it did. The dark well in her mind stayed silent, nothing more remarkable than a patch of black ice.

"Perhaps you should talk to him," said Miranda. "If you don't mind my suggesting it. You're his commander and his friend."

 _For a while, I was neither_ , Shepard thought.

"Thank you for your concern, Miranda," she said, polite but firm, a definitive change of subject. She waited until Miranda nodded, then pointed at the stack of datapads on the edge of the desk. "Anything else?"

"Nothing that requires your immediate attention." Miranda reshuffled the datapads and lifted one out of the stack. "There  _have_  been a few new sightings of those figures."

"All still near Omega?"

"Yes. Seven ships total, and the sightings disappear once they leave Omega's space."

"Have EDI keep tracking the reports. We'll start paying attention if it spreads, or if Collectors start showing an interest in any of the ships. For now, it's still a low-priority."

_Sorry, Nor, your friends will have to wait. One crisis at a time — if I'm lucky and can get through this one without any more cropping up._

"If that's all, Miranda, I'd say we're finished here. Good night."

"Good night, Shepard." 

***

 _You'd think I'd hate the stars_ , Shepard thought, in bed an hour later.  _But I don't. People call them cruel, but I know they just don't care. Beautiful and indifferent._

She sighed and rolled to her side. Her sheets felt cool against her bare legs, and smelled of sweet lemon and grass. Cerberus spared no expense, right down to the laundry facilities. The mattress had too much give, but Shepard would have happily slept on a stone slab, given the chance. Too many years spent sleeping on mass-produced military bunks left her unused to luxury, even this restrained version.

The bed was too big for just her.

 _Oh no, Shepard, you don't get to think that. You don't get to play the "if-only"_   _game. You've got enough trouble focusing as it is._

 _I don't have to focus right now. Right now, I just have to breathe._ She exhaled slowly and let her eyes drift closed. When her mind wandered, coasting on the thin edge of sleep, she found herself turning to the  _Normandy_ — the first one, and the quiet of the mess hall when she wandered out of her cabin in the middle of the night shift.

_She rubbed her eyes and frowned at the coffee machine. Why the hell did it have so many buttons? All she wanted was one cup of coffee. She wasn't even asking for milk or cream — hell, she barely even hoped for sugar-substitute — why was it so difficult to get one simple, shitty cup of coffee?_

One more report, and then I can pass out. Just need a push to get through it.

" _Shepard, you're up late."_

_She rolled her eyes. "Nice use of those C-Sec skills, Garrus. Tell me something else."_

_He coughed, and somehow managed to make it sound reproachful and nervous. Shepard sighed and flicked a last switch before turning around, defeated. "Sorry, Garrus. Not really in the best of moods."_

" _I noticed." The light gleamed off his visor as he watched her. "C-Sec skills again."_

_Shepard huffed. "Very funny. What're you doing up so late? Your shift ended hours ago."_

" _Ah, well. Turians don't sleep quite the same way humans do. We tend to grab three hour stretches here and there, not these big blocks of time." His tone seemed to disapprove, but when Shepard raised an eyebrow, Garrus flicked his mandibles at her._

" _So you're just wandering until it's time for your shift?"_

" _Something like that. Spent some time down in the practice range. Nice simulators, but they don't compare to the real thing." His hands sketched a few graceful lines in the air as he spoke. Shepard imagined him cradling his rifle against his chest, and curbed the grin that tried to lift her mouth._

" _Don't worry about getting rusty. If these reports are anything to go by, you'll have plenty of real targets to practice on."_

" _So that's why you're burning the midnight fuel."_

" _Close. It's oil. Midnight oil."_

" _Human idioms." He shook his head. "I'll get the hang of them someday."_

" _Stick around, and you'll get plenty of chances for that too."_

" _I plan on it." Garrus gave her another flicker of a grin, then ducked his head. The movement shifted the muscles in his neck, down to where his armor's collar hid the curve of his shoulder._

Oh _, thought Shepard, as her focus narrowed,_ let me see that again.

Wait, what?

" _Need any help with the reports?" Garrus lifted his eyes to hers, head tilted to the side, then coughed again. "Ah, nevermind. Forget I asked. Don't want Chief Williams worrying about Alliance secrets falling into alien hands."_

" _She won't," said Shepard. That conversation had been unpleasant, but ever since, Ash had either buried her doubts or let them go. "But thanks anyways. They're not anything you need to worry about — not yet, at least. Only have a couple more to read over, and then I'll hit the rack. Too bad there's no coffee."_

" _Hit the green button twice," said Garrus. "I watched Lieutenant Alenko fight with it yesterday," he added, ducking his head again. This time, Shepard swallowed as the muscles rolled under his skin._

It's been too damn long,  _she decided, and hoped she didn't flush. "Green button twice. Got it. Thanks."_

" _Anytime. See you in the morning, Shepard."_

 _So that's how it started,_  she thought, back in her cabin. Sleep rolled toward her, blanketing her senses and weighting her to the too-soft mattress, but she smiled. At least she could carry that with her, until the rest of her two dead years filled themselves in. 

***

 _This waking up hours before dawn is getting old_ , Shepard thought, with bleary good humor,  _but at least it gives me time to work out in private._

She rounded the corner into the mess, rubbing her thigh to ease out the last of the stiffness, and heard a startled inhale from her right. She glanced over her shoulder, and glimpsed Garrus at the table through the curtain of her hair.

"Garrus," she said. "You're up early. Or is it late?"

"Could go either way." A thick blue mug with a scalloped lip rested between his hands, a cloud of fragrant, bitter steam hanging over it. "Taking a break from running the numbers."

"That turian sleep schedule means you get to be productive while the humans are sacked out." She crossed to the refrigerator unit and pulled out a bottle of water.

"That's right," he said. Shepard heard him shift in his seat, and expected him to say goodbye, but instead, she heard the scrape of his mug as he resettled it on the table. "You're up early," he offered, all reedy syllables.

"I woke up early and couldn't go back to sleep. Figured I could lay in bed and wish I was still asleep, or get up and do something useful." She snapped the top off the bottle and took a long swallow. "I'll hit the workout room, get a few laps in before anyone else wakes up. Feel like joining me?"

She tossed the words out, friend to friend, and kept her back to him while she waited for his reply.

"I'm not really in the mood for a run," he said. "Thanks, Shepard."

 _Oh, the hell with this._ "Garrus, talk to me."

Garrus didn't move; he went so still behind her she couldn't be sure he was breathing. "About what?" said Garrus, after a pause that tightened every muscle in Shepard's shoulders, his voice thinner than she'd ever heard it.

Shepard turned around. "How about why you left C-Sec? Last time we talked on the  _Normandy,_ you were planning on wrapping up a few last cases, and maybe signing on with me again."

"Things changed." Now the subvocals returned to his voice, and the lower register carried a warning.  _Tread carefully, Shepard. This ground will betray you both._ His eyes went wide, a hint of white around the broad irises as a spark of anger glittered and disappeared.

 _Ah. There we have it._ She felt the balance between them shift, and with it came a savage joy, singing through her muscles. Anger was better than she'd gotten in weeks. Treacherous ground or not, she wanted more.

Shepard charged .

"Things must have changed to get you to leave," she said, "After everything you wanted to do, after everything you said."

If a face could turn to stone, hard and weathered, it would have looked like Garrus' face in the moment before he sighed and dropped his eyes to the table. "I thought," he said, with deliberate, fragile emphasis, "that I could do some good on Omega. After you died, the Citadel was a waste. No one listened. They wanted things to go back to the way they were. And I —" He pushed the cup away, out of the reach of his hands. "I didn't," he finished.

"So Omega?" she pressed. When Garrus nodded, she sat down next to him, where he could see her at the edge of his vision, but not feel forced to meet her eyes. He didn't flinch as she settled into her seat. He didn't move at all, not even to clench his fists. Shepard didn't know if that meant progress or not.

"So Omega," he said. "It seemed like the best option at the time. I was going where I could do some good."

"Why didn't you stay with the rest of the squad? They wouldn't have wanted you to —"

"I am  _not_  having this conversation again," Garrus snapped, in a voice like razor-wire. A second later, he gave her a quick look, face tight with misery and something else she couldn't identify, and slumped back into his armor, eyes going back to the table.

"All I'm saying is that it wasn't just my fight. It belonged to all of us. The five of you could have done something, even if the Council wouldn't listen. Why did you leave them?"

"I said I wasn't having this conversation again."

He spoke with no particular force, his voice empty as an abandoned house, but Shepard held up her hands. "Fine. Then tell me about Omega. Bringing law to the lawless?" She didn't let herself think before she asked the inevitable question. "How'd you get your squad?"

"Does it matter?" asked Garrus. He lifted his head to stare at the ceiling. Shepard's neck hurt in sympathy. "They're gone."

"It matters because they were important to you," said Shepard. Far down in her head, a bright, startled run of laughter cascaded through her — an unfamiliar woman's laugh. She risked a glance inward, but saw nothing more than the base's common room, unsteady shadows flickering in the corners and on the stairs. "They were your squad. You can talk about them, Garrus. It's okay."

"What is there to say?" A bitter note ran straight through his voice, down to a rocky bottom. "They're  _gone,_  because I was careless."

If she pushed too far, Garrus would close up and turn barnacle-hard. Was it worth the risk of catching herself on his sharp edges?

If it got him talking, if it gave them both something solid to cling to, then  _yes._

"Tell me about them," she said, but she meant "Let me share this", and hoped he understood _._

Garrus dropped his head between his shoulders and sighed.

"There were eleven of them," he said. "They came in…all sorts of ways. Some I found, some found me. However it happened, they all wanted to help make Omega  _better._  To look at us, you wouldn't think we would work together. Techs, ex-mercs looking to atone, former medics. Even had a salarian who had to have been STG. _"_ He laughed. "We should have known it was never going to happen. It's  _Omega._ It doesn't want to be better. You saw what it was like. Thugs kicking the helpless. We gave them hope."

Shepard nodded, and waited for him to keep going. The shadows in her memory hovered uncertainly, refusing to resolve into familiar shapes, but they would, if she could just keep Garrus talking.

And he did, to her silent surprise. She kept her eyes low, watching the movement of his hands instead of his face, in case he noticed how far he had let her travel and shut himself away again.

"We were together for almost two years," he said. "We had an endgame, a plan to drive the mercs off the station. And then one of my squad, a turian named Sidonis, betrayed us. He lured me out of the base, and the mercs hit my squad. I got back as fast as I could, but only two of them were alive. They didn't last long." He gave her an empty, sidelong look, and Shepard knew a part of him still stood on the balcony, lining up his next shot. That part of him would never leave the base.

Her mind twisted, and his voice slipped through her, weary and bleak.

_I'm trying to make it brighter before it all ends._

_Oh God,_ she thought. Wild hope, tenacious as a weed, choked her.  _How long did I stay with him? I have to ask._

"Garrus —"

"They're gone," he said. "They died, and I wasn't there. Now all I have are memories, because once someone's gone, they're gone."

A sense of wrongness stabbed her.

_Not always, Garrus._

She closed her eyes against it, and pushed, reaching out to touch his arm. "Do you —"

"I'm going to find him." Garrus pulled away from her hand before she could touch him. "I'm going to find Sidonis, and I'm going to make him feel every death before I kill him."

"Garrus..." The moment broke apart; if she had ever had a chance to ask, it was gone.

"Thanks for coming by, Shepard. I should get back to work." He stood, a closed door, a sheer cliff side, and walked back to the main battery. 

***

The Illusive Man called an hour later, as Shepard started her sixth mile, to tell her that the hammer had landed.

 _Horizon_.


	31. Chapter 31

On Horizon, nothing moved. No untethered pets, no churring insects. A vid screen hissed static in one prefab apartment, but every room they entered stood empty. Shepard stared at the screen for a long moment before flicking it off. 

“No sign of forceful entry,” said Garrus. He met her gaze from across the room. “Whatever happened here, it happened too fast for anyone to defend themselves.” 

“You’d think the downed comms would’ve been enough of a fucking warning.” Jack spat to the side. “Stupid colonists.” 

“Not stupid. Comm systems unreliable in the Terminus, probably thought it was temporary outage. Many reasons for outage: electrical storm, grass fires —“ 

“— Fucking _Collectors_ ,” interrupted Jack. “Or even slavers. They should’ve been ready.” 

“For this?” snapped Garrus. He pointed out the window. Shepard followed the line of his arm to where two dark brown pods, slick with something that looked like resin, leaned against the stairwell. “How can anyone be ready for this? For the seeker swarms?” 

“Guns can’t hurt,” said Jack. “Big fuckin’ guns.”  

“Of course,” said Garrus, voice tight. “Because untrained colonists with guns is a _great_ idea.” 

“Enough,” said Shepard. The squad turned to look at her. “We’re wasting time. Mordin, scan those pods. They look organic — might be some kind of biometric reading that’ll come in useful. I get the feeling we’re going to be seeing a lot of them.” As Mordin slipped out of the room, she turned back to Jack and Garrus. 

“I didn’t bring you two along to argue,” she said. “You’re here to do a job. If it’s going to be a problem, you can go wait back at the extraction point.” She met each of their gazes. “Clear?” 

“Clear,” said Jack. “As long as he can —“ 

“I said _enough_ , Jack. Get focused.” Shepard let herself regret breaking her usual iron-clad restriction on ground team size for a heartbeat; there wasn’t a worse time to discover interpersonal issues, but she had needed firepower, and a lot of it.  

She had needed Garrus at her back. 

 _Clouded, Shepard_.  

“Sorry,” said Jack a moment later, though she didn’t quite sound sincere. Shepard decided to let it pass, and glanced at Garrus, eyebrows raised. He nodded stiffly. 

“Shepard!” shouted Mordin. “Shepard, your attention is required.”  

“Yell a little louder, Mordin, I don’t think they heard you back on the _Normandy._ ” She leapt the window sill and dropped next to Mordin, the clang of her boots on the thin metal ringing sharply in her ears. Garrus and Jack jumped after her. “What’ve you got?”

He pointed wordlessly at the pod. She had to stand on the balls of her feet to see inside, but what she saw made her take a step back, hissing. 

The interior of the pod was empty, but scratches — dozens of them — covered the curved walls. She reached inside and traced a set of lines: five in a row, running parallel to each other.  

“Goddamn it.” She pulled her hand back and ignored the urge to wipe it on her leg. “So the seeker swarms effects are temporary.” 

“Last just long enough to get victims into pods and onto Collector Ship. Then emptied and brought back to be reused.” Mordin’s mouth tightened. “How many times, I wonder?” 

“Some things, we’re better not knowing,” said Garrus. 

“Agreed.” Shepard tightened her grip on her shotgun. “Let’s make sure they don’t get another chance.” 

*** 

"Jack, sweep that prefab. Garrus, make sure nothing's coming up behind us. Five minutes to sweep and then we move on." Shepard crouched next to one of the frozen colonists, a big man in ill-fitting work clothes.  _How the hell am I supposed to fight this?_  she asked herself, already weary. 

“You’re quiet,” said Garrus, coming up behind her with quiet, easy grace. 

Shepard didn’t look up from the frozen colonist’s face. His features were a smeared blur under the seeker swarm field, but she saw the faint dark pattern of a tattoo on his neck, and his eyes seemed to follow her as she crouched next to him. “I guess so, but looking at all of this — what’s there to say?” 

“I remember —“ he paused, and Shepard bit her lip. 

“If you’ve got something on your mind, Garrus, spit it out. You’ve got till Mordin finishes up his scan, and then we keep moving.” She nodded toward Mordin, who bent over another set of pods, omni-tool glowing. Jack stood in the doorway of one of prefabs, her face tilted up to the sun. 

“Are you all right? No matter how bad it was before, you weren’t quite so…” He waved his hand in obvious frustration, and Shepard watched with no surprise as his fingers tightened into a fist at the edge of her vision. 

“Forget it,” he said. “Forget I asked.” 

“I’m fine, Garrus,” she said, without looking at him. She pushed a loose piece of hair behind her ear. “Well, as far as I know, at least. Just don’t have the energy for joking around. Not here.” He stood with his back to the sun; when she turned her gaze up to him, the light dazzled her briefly and she blinked away tears. “How’re you holding up?”  

“You don’t have to worry about me, Shepard.” 

She hummed. Why he’d picked this moment to start talking, she didn’t know, and she didn’t plan on asking. Too much work to do. “You’re part of my crew. It’s my job to worry.” She felt Garrus’ stare on the side of her face, and tried not to flush.  

“That..noise,” he said. “You keep doing it.”  

“The humming?” She rubbed her throat. “Does it bother you? I’m not saying something rude, am I?” 

“No, but it’s new. Just like the rest of you.” He caught himself, too late, as Shepard blinked at him, feeling like she’d just been slapped. “That’s not what I meant.” 

Shepard’s gut twisted, her throat too tight to reply, so she just laughed, low and humorless. “Thanks for the reminder.” She rolled her shoulders,  

“Shepard —“  

“It’s fine, Garrus.” She turned away. _That’s what you get,_ she thought savagely. _You let yourself get clouded. Focus._ “Mordin, how’re we doing?”  

“Scan almost finished. Just waiting for —“  

“Hey, Shepard!” Jack waved from inside one of the prefabs. “You gotta check this out. There’s some kinda spikes over here and — what the hell, why’re you running?” 

“Spikes?” Shepard shoved past Jack. “Where?” 

“Out on the other side of that platform. Why the hell are you whispering?” 

“Get into cover!” Shepard leaned around the door, shotgun half-raised, her pulse thudding heavy in her neck. “Shit.”  

“Shepard?” Garrus crouched down next to Jack. Whatever had passed between them a moment ago, he’d put it aside, and his eyes met hers without flinching. He had her six. Shepard felt an absurd gratitude toward him, and nodded over her shoulder.  

“Husks,” she whispered, and watched as his mandibles drew tight to his face. 

Mordin crept into the prefab, bent almost double with his pistol raised. Shepard waved him into cover with the rest of the squad.  

“I saw them on Eden Prime,” she whispered. “The geth used them to create Husks.” 

 _Garrus called them “machine cultists” when we found them in the mine, but they were just Husks._ Her mouth filled with sour, electric saliva as she tested her amp. The responding spike jolted down her spine and into the cradle of her hips.  

Mordin nodded. Jack’s hands tightened on her pistol. “Then what’re we waiting for?” she hissed. “Let’s go.”  

“The quickest way to the GARDIANs is across that platform,” said Garrus. “If we’ve got a clear path, I think we should take it.”  

Shepard nodded, and peered around the edge of the door. The spikes stretched up toward the clouds, needle-bright and empty. “We’re clear. Stick to cover and stay low. Once one of them figures out we’re here, they all will. If we get caught, keep them at a distance. Don’t let them get close.” 

 _The Collectors take colonists, they don’t convert them. Why the spikes, then?_  

 _Questions later. Get to the turrets._  

Garrus cocked his head, and Shepard strained to hear what he was listening to: a low susurrus, rolling toward them, soft enough to be the wind. The sound of clumsy footsteps echoed under it. Time to move.  

“On me!” She sprinted down the stairs on the balls of her feet, aware of every click and rattle of her armor, listening for the first clotted howl. Halfway across the platform, she ducked behind a crate, her back against the metal, and waited for her squad pass her. 

 _Mordin. Jack. Garrus._ She whispered their names to herself as the needle twinged, hotter than ever, and the battle-spell sounded in her ears. Twenty feet more, and they’d be able to take cover in another prefab, where the second story would let them see their way to the laser turrets. 

Twenty feet more. The needle burned into her back. 

“Move! Double time!” 

She swung over the crate and ran through the forest of spikes, weaving between them. Three sets of boots pounded behind her. There had to be three. She had to be sure.  

“Shepard!” Garrus yelled. “Incoming!” 

She ran. At the foot of the steps, she whipped around, shotgun raised, and waved her squad past her. “Go. _Go!”_ The first howl broke the air, already too close. Garrus stood in the doorway of the prefab, rifle raised to cover her. Behind him, Jack crouched with her fists glowing blue.

“Shepard! Over you!”

Shepard turned her gaze and shotgun upward. An oak-colored shadow dropped toward her, the air dark and blurred at its shoulders, its massive head balanced on a non-existent neck. 

 _So_ , she thought, as the shadow slid a thin, curved blade out of its armor, _that’s what a Collector looks like._

_***_

Without control, anger was just force: brutal and effective on its own, but wayward and unreliable. Anger made Shepard strong; it made her powerful, but _control_ made her spin out of the way of the Collector’s blade, a bare second before it carved her armor — and the skin beneath it — open.  

The fight on Omega had been all raw emotion; when her relief at finding Garrus turned to crumbled stone, she had nothing left but her anger and the thinnest shred of hope. She’d been able to twist both to her needs, but her body had paid for it. She had fought, but not as she could. 

A Vanguard by nature, yes, but she was still an Adept by training, and that meant the tools she choose — her body, her anger, her squad — obeyed her. And deep in her muscles, ready for this moment, were the memories of how to fight like this. She remembered knives, testing their balance in her hands, how she loved them and how she knew she would rarely get a chance to fight like this. 

 _But I did, once,_ she thought, watching the blade descend. It had been so easy, so damned easy, to kill someone with a knife, and it came back to her as the shadow fell toward her.  _Remember to wait. Know where the blade will land before you move._

 _Now put it away. Don't think about it._ The memory vanished, but her body remembered. 

Before the Collector’s blade finished its arc, Shepard sent the first bolt of energy through her hands and twisted her arm on the release. The Pull barely staggered the Collector, but she used the moment to roll away, out of the line of fire, as more blurred shapes dropped from the roofs of the buildings. 

The Collectors had planned an ambush. No matter where her squad went, the Collectors had been waiting for them. At least here they had some cover, and room for her to move. To dance.  

 _Small blessings._  

Jack screamed behind her. “More incoming, Shepard!”  

“I see them!” she yelled back. “Stay in cover and don’t let them get close!” Her barriers shuddered, hissing as they recovered from the staccato burst of gunfire. “Keep that path clear behind me!”  

“Dammit, Shepard —“ Garrus sounded more resigned than angry. “Concussive shot, watch it!”  

“Got it!” She rolled to the side as the shot stripped the barriers from two of the Collectors on her three. She grinned as they stumbled into each other, chittering, and hit the Charge. The impact sent them crashing into a prefab wall, their wings crushed and torn. Shepard took off one’s head with a round from her shotgun, the incendiary rounds cauterizing the jagged edges of its neck instantly. The second Collector struggled to its feet, its rifle coming to bear on her stomach, but before she could re-aim, heat erupted along its skin, and it fell shrieking to the ground.  

 _Thanks, Mordin._  

The smell of burning flesh: something one never should get used to. But the smell was everywhere, in her mouth, her nose, deep in her lungs.  

“It’s a bad sign I’m getting used to that smell, right?” yelled Garrus. Shepard shot him a look over her shoulder, and got the barest flicker of a grin in return. 

“Probably!” she shouted back. “As long as it doesn’t mess with your aim, I’m not complaining!”  

His reply came in the form of another concussive blast, and two more sets of barriers went down. Shepard hit the Charge again, as the first wave of Husks swarmed toward her.  

*** 

“All right, now’s our chance for a breather.” Shepard left Garrus to seal the door behind them and nodded to the others. “Nice work with the Shockwaves, Jack.”  

“Whatever.” Jack’s face twisted, then broke out into an unexpected smile. “But it was pretty fun watching those little shits fly.”  

“Charming,” said Garrus. “Good thing we’ll have plenty more where they came from, then.” 

“No doubt,” said Shepard, testing the way her amp sat inside its port. She couldn’t afford to rattle it.

While the others reloaded, she paced, and remembered a dank mine, and the splash of a footstep behind her.  

_More Husks, pouring out of the living rock itself, groaning and swinging heavy fists, all lives stolen by the gleaming spikes._

The worst of it hadn’t been the groans, or her impotent rage at what had been done to them. The worst of it all had been the part of her that felt awed at the vast indifference implied by the pristine metal. The Reapers, the spikes told her, would never fear organics. At best, organics would be useful, nothing more. Something in her recognized that, even as she fought them, and responded with holy dread. 

If they wouldn’t fear her, she would make them hate her, she had decided, and used her rage to carry her through to the end, where Saren’s body lay broken open in front of her and the fleets tore Sovereign apart. Before this ended, however bloody, she would make sure her name lay heavy in every Collectors’ mouth.  

 _Or what passes for a mouth_ , she thought, with a thin smile. 

“Shepard?”  

She turned her head slowly. The cool, artificial walls of the prefab and the smell of charred sweetgrass closed around her, anchoring her in the present. Garrus watched her over his rifle, his hands stilled on the barrel. His eyes looked ancient, a bleak wariness in them she knew wasn’t directed at her.  

They would always have this, however many times he turned from her: her anger was his, her fight was his. Garrus nodded once, holding her gaze, and slammed a fresh clip home.  

“Let’s move,” said Shepard.  

*** 

After the mechanic sealed the doors behind them, Shepard waved Mordin and Jack ahead. Garrus lingered to walk at her side, mandibles twitching. 

“They knew it was you,” he said, just for her ears. “They called you by _name._ We all heard it.” 

“Mhm.”  

“And that doesn’t bother you, Shepard?”

“Not particularly.” She touched her cheek absently, brow furrowed. “The mechanic said _Lieutenant Alenko_ ,” she murmured. “Kaidan said he had an assignment, but I had no idea it was —“ 

“Here,” Garrus finished for her. “How could you have known, Shepard? Even if Kaidan wanted to tell you, he wouldn’t have been able to.”  

She blew out a long breath. “Yeah, but the fact that he’s on a colony the Collectors just _happened_ to hit…makes you wonder.”  

“No such thing as coincidence,” Garrus said. “Do you think they knew we were coming?”  

“The Collectors? They have to know we’re tracking them. We haven’t exactly been subtle, and they’ve got contacts all over the Terminus systems.” She rubbed her cheek again. “But one of the squad, here? And now the Collectors? That’s personal.”  

“So is calling you by name in the middle of a firefight, and threatening to tear you apart, but it’s nice to see you’re keeping a sense of perspective.”  

Shepard tilted her head back to catch his expression, but only saw the glare of the sun off his visor. If he was joking, she couldn’t tell, and she didn’t have the time to waste figuring it out.  

“Come on,” she said. “Got a lot of ground to cover.” She started to jog, Garrus a step behind her.  

*** 

Long years of experience had left Shepard all too aware of what a failed defense looked like, even if no bodies remained. 

 _This is what Akuze looked like, just before we got hit_. 

No, no. Now was not the time to think of Akuze. She focused past the memory, to the stacks of crates and the canisters placed just so. How long had the colonists managed to hold out?  

The deep scorchmarks in the sweetgrass said, _Not long._

Her back ached, muscles held stiff too long around the bright, useless heat of warning. She already knew things were as bad as they could get; three skirmishes with the Collectors, and dozens of frozen colonists littering the squad’s path toward the guns.  

“Spread out,” she said. “I don’t want them flanking us. Mordin, see if you can get around whatever the Collectors are using to jam the _Normandy’_ s comms. We’re going to need EDI to get those GARDIANS up and running.” 

“Of course.”  

While Jack and Garrus covered the flanks in slow, criss-crossing arcs, Shepard stayed at Mordin’s shoulder, her eyes on the ship. The low chiming hum of the bypass wound the muscles in her back tighter with each cycle, and not just from anticipating the Collectors’ strike — and strike they would, as soon as they realized how far the squad had gotten.  

“Any way you can hurry that up, doc?” hissed Jack as she passed them, peering down the scope of her assault rifle. “This place gives me the fucking creeps.”  

“Working as fast as I can.” Mordin’s hand flew over his omni-tool display. “Ah. Of course. Not quite quantum organic encryption. Should be able to finish bypass quickly.” 

“Whatever it is, Mordin, just bring it down.” Shepard had a brief, unexpected moment of fond nostalgia as in her memory, Wrex told her to just smash it and move on. 

“Will just take time.” Mordin’s fingers blurred over the keypad. “First level down. Two to go.” 

“Keep at it.” Even with Jack and Garrus on the perimeter, Shepard scanned the prefabs for points of entry, sniper perches, and found nothing. Four points of entry on the ground, including the door the squad had used. Not bad, not bad at all.  

 _Too bad we’re dealing with enemies who can drop out of the sky._ She swung up onto a crate, and let her eyes coast along the roofs of the surrounding prefabs. No sign of any Collectors, and off to the west, the ship itself hovered over the fields, its shadow souring the ground underneath it. Nothing broke the silence except Mordin’s soft muttering and the bypass.  

So why did the needle twist and sting in her spine? She knew to expect an attack, and pulses of adrenalin kicked her bloodstream in response, but the needle was a warning, not a reaction. 

A warning that had never been wrong before, not once in her life. Shepard licked her lips, ready to call the squad back. She wanted them all together, at each other’s backs, not spread across the field, and she wanted them back _now_ , before whatever was coming hit.  

“Shepard!” Garrus shouted. She tried not to wince, more from the spark of alarm in his voice than from fear that the Collectors would hear him. “Shepard, got something over here!” 

The needle burrowed into the small of her back, the heat flaring in her hips and her ribs. She jumped down from the crate and waved Jack to cover Mordin. “What is it?” 

“It’s one of the colonists,” said Garrus, his tone unsure. “But they —“  

“But they _what,_ Garrus?” She could only see the top of his head from over the crate he was crouching behind, and the edge of his visor. “Spit it out.” 

“He’s dead.” 

Shepard huffed, irritated but not relieved. “That’s it? We’ve seen dead colonists, Garrus. Not many, but it’s nothing new.” 

“This is,” he said, and lifted his head to meet her gaze. “Shepard, you need to see this.” His lower subvocal thickened to a low buzz, one she recognized as pure alarm. She’d only heard Garrus sound like this once, maybe twice, and the sound kicked her into a sprint to cross the last few feet to him.  

He had sounded like that on the Citadel, just before Sovereign invaded Saren’s corpse.  

The colonist lay on his side, facing away from Shepard, in a heavy work uniform with grass stains on its elbows. One of his boots was gone. 

“It doesn’t look like the seeker swarms even touched him,” said Garrus, in his too-thick voice. He shut off his omni-tool but stayed in his crouch, balanced lightly on the balls of his feet. “I don’t think the Collectors killed him, Shepard.”  

“Why not?” she asked. 

“Because none of the bodies we found looked like this.” Garrus put a hand on the colonist’s shoulder and gently tipped the body onto its back. The man’s face was empty, slack and mottled grey, with dark runnels of blood spilling from his nose and ears. Mercifully, his eyes were closed, but blood crusted along the lashes. 

“Damn,” Shepard said, more to herself than Garrus. The man’s hands were hooked into claws, with dirt crusted under his nails. Streaks of dirt and grass stains covered the front of his uniform, from ankles to neck, as if he’d been dragged facedown over the sweetgrass. “What the hell happened to him?”  

“I did a scan,” said Garrus. “He’s been dead for too long for me to get anything conclusive, but best I can tell, he died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Every blood vessel in his brain burst.” 

They stared at each other. Shepard tried to imagine what her face looked like, and couldn’t manage it. Garrus’ face looked like a swordblade, every angle tight and harsh in the yellow sunlight.  

“If the Collectors had a weapon like that,” she said slowly, “they wouldn’t have used it on the colonists. They want them alive. The ones they killed were accidents.”  

Garrus nodded. He seemed to have forgotten to blink. “And if they had a weapon that could do this, you can be sure they’d have used it on us.”  

“You saved that scan?” Garrus nodded again and pushed himself up. “Good. Make sure Mordin gets it when we’re back on the _Normandy_. But for now, I want him focused on getting through that jamming signal.”  

On cue, the bypass chimed, louder than ever, and Mordin’s pleased _a-ha!_ echoed toward them. “Shepard! Connection to _Normandy_ re-established!” 

Shepard didn’t reply, halfway through hailing the ship before Mordin finished talking. “EDI, can you get the laser turrets online?”  

“The operating protocols are embedded with quantum organic encryption, Shepard.”

“Is that a yes or a no, EDI?”   

“Yes. I am fully capable of breaking the encryption, but it will take time, and I am reading several lifeforms approaching your position. I recommend a defensive posture.”  

“Copy that, EDI. Just make it fast.” Shepard checked the thermal clips in her shotgun, Garrus doing the same at her side. “Jack, Mordin, you heard EDI. We’ve got incoming. Same plan as before: stick to cover and don’t let the Husks get close.” 

“Bring those fuckers on!” Jack yelled, and the first moan answered her. 

Shepard rolled her shoulders, her mouth already full of the taste of her biotics, and pushed herself up onto one of the low platforms. “All right, people, get ready!” She sucked in a deep lungful of air, and threw herself toward the winged shadow dropping off the roof of the nearest prefab. “Charging!” 

Her re-entry was unsteady; she had to throw herself to the side to stay under a second Collector’s line of sight before her amp cooled and she could Charge again. Once, Mordin sent an incineration across her path as she Charged, and super-heated air singed her eyelashes. Close, too close. 

“Charging!” she screamed the next time, taking the extra half-second to throw her arm out toward her chosen target, and Garrus answered her with a bellowed “ _Got it!_ ” in the instant before she Charged. When she exploded back into the air, the Collector’s barriers were down. 

 _Yes,_ she thought, fierce as a prayer. _Yes, Shepard and Vakarian._   

“Shepard! Watch your ass! Coming up on your three!” 

So Jack had decided to become a team player after all. Shepard pivoted on her heel, feeding the beginning of a Shockwave down into her hands. The Collector loomed over her, its heavy head lifting as she let the cascade rip out of her palms. The Collector stumbled back a step, then threw itself toward her, withered hands clutching at the air. 

 _Run,_ screamed the needle in her spine, trickling star-smote heat into her gut. _Run, run, run, don’t look at it. Don’t you dare look._

Shepard looked. She couldn’t help it. 

The Collector closed its hand around her wrist. Horizon vanished in a bolt of grey light. 

*** 

_Hell is a cloudless sky._

_Shepard doesn’t know how long she’s been running. Long enough for her lungs to burn and for her knees to turn to water, not long enough to get herself to safety._

_“Come on!” she yells over her shoulder. “Keep moving! Don’t make yourself a target.”_

_They’re all targets here._

_Phillips stumbles at her side. “They got — they got —“ he pants, almost retching, and Shepard grabs him by the arm and drags him forward. She doesn’t look at the hole in his side, where acid ate away his armor. There’s no blood, but she can see a white gleam against his charred skin. Phillips is —_

_No._

_Fear crackles off him in sour waves; she can smell it, and taste it. Shepard pulls him along. No one gets left behind while they’re breathing._

_Someone shouts behind her, a warning, and she throws herself down with Phillips underneath her. He bleats in pain, his hands scrabbling against her armor, but the blast passes over their heads and spatters against the rock face above them. Shepard shoves Phillips to his feet. No one screamed this time. That’s good. Maybe the ones left can make it out._  

_“Where are the grenades?” she hisses, risking the two seconds it takes to catch her breath and look around. “Where the hell are they?”_

_At the edge of her vision, Phillips gives her a bleak look. “Carlton had ‘em,” he says, his voice a breathy whine. “Carlton had ‘em, and that thing —“_

That thing _roars behind them, and even the blameless blue sky shudders._  

_Hell is open sky. Hell is flat, even ground. Hell is a pit of lies, and at its center is a howling, hungry mouth._

_“Move!” Shepard yells, and pulls Phillips as she starts to run again. Cropper and Hamato are on her heels, but Daniels falls over after two steps._  

_“I can’t — run — anymore —“ he cries. “I can’t —“_

_“You can! Get off your ass!” Shepard screams. So this is panic. So this is hell. She hadn’t expected either to be so peaceful, so quiet. She can hear the way her breath scrapes its way out of her lungs, and the raspy beat of her pulse._

I will not die here, _she thinks._ I belong in space, not here.  

_The mouth howls again, and the ground heaves beneath them. Daniels shrieks, a helpless blast of noise, and an explosion of rock buries him._

_Hell’s mouth opens, and fire pours out. Cropper and Hamato are gone, their bones washed clean in the bright flood, and now it’s just her and Phillips. Shepard pulls him against her side and keeps running. His whole weight falls on her. He’s not even trying to help, and if she could talk she’d be screaming at him to move._

_She realizes Phillips is dead fifteen seconds later, and she drops him, no breath to spare for an apology. That’ll come later. The second Mako is in sight, and by some small sliver of mercy, it’s intact. She can get inside, she can come back for survivors —_  

 _She can close the mouth forever._  

_Shepard puts on a last burst of speed, her feet skimming the ground. She can’t catch her breath and her vision is grey, but that’s fine. She’s almost there._

_The Mako’s hatch is open, just enough for her to swing inside, but the mouth roars, and fire licks up her spine, down her legs.  She can’t scream. The nerves in her back have to be gone, but the pain is there, endlessly circling. She throws herself inside, flat on her belly, kicking herself toward the grenade launcher. It’s so close._

_The only things she can smell are burning flesh and her own sticky-sweet fear. Her hand closes around the controls just as the mouth roars again, and she has enough time to aim and fire before the mouth burns her away._  

_The roar cuts off, and the Mako nearly tips over as a massive, impossible body slams into the ground._

_Hell is in the Mako with her. Hell is in her body._

_Hell is the sky._

_She closes her eyes._  

 _***_  

Shepard opened her eyes. The Collector’s hand hadn’t finished tightening around her wrist; she twisted her arm and pulled herself free. She reeled away, light-headed; when she tried to lift her shotgun, the Collector swiped it to the side and reached for her again, fingers clawing for her face. 

“Dammit, Shepard!” yelled Garrus. “I can’t get a shot, get out of the way!” 

Akuze collided with Horizon; she saw the Collectors, the shredded Husks, and she saw her platoon, torn and melted on the rocks. She felt the thresher maw’s acid on her back. 

“No!” she screamed, and threw herself into the Charge on pure reflex. The Collector dodged away from her, pearly eyes rolling in their sockets, and she flashed past it, crashing into a Husk on her re-entry. 

 _There are no Husks on Akuze_ , she told herself. _Remember that. You’re not on Akuze anymore. You don’t think about Akuze anymore, or what came after._

_But it’s in me oh the acid in me like wasps so many wasps I smell them I taste them I I I I I_

_Focus!_  

A pack of Husks closed, three on either side, feeding their clotted moans into the air. Shepard rolled back, out of the way of the squad’s aim, and tucked herself behind a crate. She paused long enough to check her clips and fumble for her comms.  

“EDI! Get those damn guns up!”  

“Process eighty percent complete, Commander.” 

“Got to be faster, EDI, we’re in the shit here!” 

“I don’t know why you’re complaining, Shepard!” Garrus yelled, some of his old mad cheer laced through his subvocals. “I’m still doing all the work!” He cracked off another concussive blast, and Jack whooped as she followed it with a Shockwave of her own. 

Shepard laughed, too surprised to do anything more, and found her anchor. She was on Horizon, with Garrus, fighting Husks. Fighting the Reapers. 

 _Just like old times._   

Akuze faded, her new skin settled around her, finally a comfort instead of a cage, and Shepard stood, shotgun raised. 

“If you’re doing all the work, Garrus, why am I the one sweating?” 

“Evolutionary flaw!” Mordin yelled. “Incineration tech ready!” Shepard breathed in once, and followed the burst of flame with two shotgun blasts. The Collectors tumbled to the ground, already half-ash. 

“We’re good, Shepard!” said Garrus, still cheerful. “It’s over.”

_“Come on out, Lieutenant. It’s over.”_

_“Jesus, look at her, she can’t move. Get the medi-gel. She’s in shock.”_

_“I —“_

_“Don’t try to talk. Stay still, we’ve got you.”_

_She doesn’t open her eyes. The wasps are still in her body, trailing fire. If she keeps her eyes closed, they can hurt only her body. They can’t hurt_ her _._

Shepard sucked in a stinking lungful of air. “I want a sweep —“ She caught herself before she said _Hamato_ , and pushed on. “Garrus, Jack — make sure we’re clear. I don’t want any more surprises.” 

“We’re on it.” Garrus jerked his head; Jack sneered but followed him, looking more relaxed than Shepard had seen her. Mordin knelt over one of the ashy corpses, omni-tool glowing. 

“Any chance we can bring a body or two back with us, Mordin?” She rubbed her wrist to banish the feeling of the tight, withered fingers.  

“No. Specimens too degraded. Self-destruct mechanism.”  

“Because that would be too easy,” she sighed, and made herself let go of her wrist. She still smelled fear, acrid and sweet, but had no way to tell which squad it belonged to. “EDI, are those laser turrets ready?”  

“Process complete, Commander.”  

“Target the Collector Ship,” Shepard said. “Get them off this colony.” 

 _I just doomed half a colony to whatever the Collectors have planned._  

“Shepard,” said Garrus. “The colonists —“ 

“We can’t take on that ship, Garrus.”

The heavy concussion of the first laser salvo cut off his reply. Shepard turned to watch the Collector Ship rise, monstrous warped stone moving lightly as cobwebs as Garrus crossed to stand at her side, his shadow falling over her. A few feet behind her, Jack rattled off curses in a low, miserable voice. Even Mordin was subdued. All the adrenalin from the fight dropped away, and left them empty and silent. Half a colony was better than Freedom’s Progress, or any of the others that went before, but it wasn’t anything like a victory. 

Arriving too late to do anything had its advantages, Shepard mused, a rueful lift of her lips cutting across her face. 

 Her head ached dully, the last of the light-headedness deepening to faint nausea. She wanted to close her eyes, but she kept her gaze on the ship. How many colonists were in those pods now, trying to scratch their way out? 

Dreamy, blinding rage rose out of her gut to strangle her. Where had it been when she was lost on Akuze? Why hadn’t she been able to save them? Even one more — 

“You did your best, Shepard,” said Garrus, He even sounded like he meant it. 

Shepard nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Tell that to the ones I didn’t help. Cold comfort, Garrus.” 

“Is there any other kind?” 

Without so much as an internal quaver, her rage shifted, and focused on Garrus. _Now you want to talk, you want to joke and cover my six. Now you want to be_ friends. _Where were you a month ago?_  

Deep as she could, she buried it, and breathed slowly through her nose until the sharpest replies faded. The bridge between them was fragile as wet paper, and a single hard look from her would destroy it. Better not to say anything at all. She didn’t look at Garrus, not trusting her mouth not to let out the bladed words sitting on her tongue, and watched the Collector Ship vanish through the cloud cover, back to its mission. 

She was back to being a step behind. 

“Movement,” said Mordin, and Shepard had her shotgun raised and the beginnings of a Shockwave in her hands before he could say more. She turned to face where Mordin pointed, and sighted her first shot. 

“ _Dios_ ,” said a man in standard colony work clothes, stepping around a crate. “So you’re the ones who got the turrets up and running. I owe you a drink for that.” He tipped a wide grin at Shepard, the tattoo on his neck dark against warm skin. Shepard remembered him: the colonist whose eyes followed her through the seeker field holding him frozen.  

Shepard lowered her shotgun, Garrus following her lead, and gave the man a glare that had him straightening his spine until she thought she heard bones creaking. “Hold it,” she ordered. “I want a name.” 

“Lieutenant James Vega, ma’am,” he fired off, snapping a salute in her direction. “Alliance Marines, under the command of Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko.”

A brief pause, and then Garrus coughed. Shepard forced herself not to turn the glare on him, and crossed to the marine. “What the hell is the Alliance doing on a Terminus colony?” she asked, grateful for the excuse to vent some of her anger, even if the marine didn’t deserve it. “I thought they only cared when it came to recruitment drives.”  

Vega didn’t back down. He dropped his salute and gave her another grin — not as wide as the first, but with a more appreciative edge than before. “Lieutenant Alenko’s better at explaining than I am,” he said. “Lemme take you to him.” 

Kaidan, alive. Shepard blow out a long breath as Vega waved her forward. She holstered her shotgun, but kept the Shockwave in reach. 

Just in case. 


	32. Chapter 32

The survivors had gathered in a small clearing between a knot of prefabs. They huddled in groups, sharing blankets arms slung around each other’s shoulders, heads close together. Few spoke, and those only whispered. A handful of people moved between the groups, the set of their shoulders setting them apart as Alliance, even in their work clothes. Kaidan looked up from a half-dismantled comm terminal when Vega yelled, but didn’t rise as the squad approached.

Kaidan’s flat, glassy gaze gave Shepard a nervy chill — not just because shock sat so poorly on Kaidan’s face, but because she’d seen it too many times before. Not just on Kaidan: on everyone after Virmire and Ilos, on her own face in the mirror as she scrubbed off layers of dirt and blood. And on Akuze --  

Shepard turned her inward gaze away from the memory before she felt fire along her back again, but still too slowly to avoid seeing Phillips’ face, his features slack, like a ruined house collapsing from the foundation up. 

 _No._ She held out a hand to Kaidan, not knowing if he would take it, and not caring. He could spit on it for all she cared, as long as the caved-in set to his face disappeared. 

“You look like shit,” she said, a diamond-bright edge to her voice. At her side, Vega laughed and tried to hide it with a cough. She didn’t spare him a second glance. The dull throbbing in her temples beat to match her pulse; every few seconds it sharpened and sent grey flashes across the edges of her vision. At least the nausea was gone, even if the hot, dry sensation of pressure on her wrist hadn’t faded.

When Kaidan looked up, his gaze darkened to a smolder. “That all you have to say, Commander?” he spat out. An instant later, his face crumpled into familiar, apologetic lines, and he took her hand with a groan. “Sorry, I —“ 

“Don’t be,” she said, pulling him up. “Good to see some anger.” 

“Because anger’s a tool, right,” he said, with a sigh. “I see you met Vega.” 

“That I did.” She dropped Kaidan’s hand and stepped back, hands on her hips. Garrus met her eyes over Kaidan’s shoulder, browplates raised in a silent question that she answered with a nod.  _All clear here_. He nodded back, all business, and knelt beside a colonist whose hands were buried in a tangle of circuitry. Shepard hid a smile, not quite trusting the thaw between them, but she wanted to enjoy the familiar pleasure she got in watching Garrus work. She cleared her throat and focused on Kaidan instead. “Nice get-up. No armor allowed?” 

This time, Kaidan’s gaze spoke for him:  _Always the charmer, Shepard._  “It’s hard to install haptic interfaces in full armor,” he replied, then let his voice drop. “Besides, we were trying to blend in. You know, not remind the colonists at every step that we’re Alliance.” 

Shepard didn’t look at Vega. The man was the size of a shuttle; everything about him screamed  _Alliance Marine_. “Smart move,” she said, in as neutral a voice as she could. Kaidan gave her a look that told her the attempt had failed, but he didn’t comment. “So this was the assignment you couldn’t tell me about.” 

Kaidan nodded. “Yeah. What a mess.” He dusted his hands on his trousers and looked around the clearing. “We did a preliminary headcount. Looks like the Collectors got about a third of the colonists.” His gaze rested on hers for a moment before shifting downward, toward his feet. “What a mess,” he said again, with a sigh. 

“It’s not your fault,” she began, and stopped when Kaidan gave her a hard little smile. 

“We were sent here to protect the colony against slavers, officially — ‘No one wants another Mindoir’ was the phrase — but we’d heard the rumors about the Collectors, even before Cerberus — before you made your first move. Our orders were to get the turrets up and running, let the colonists know we weren’t leaving them out here on their own.” Kaidan sighed again, and Shepard forced her hands into fists to keep from shaking him. Across the clearing, Garrus glanced up from his work, and watched her without expression. 

“Not that we did much good,” Kaidan went on, and she turned her gaze back to him. “We barely had the turrets in place and hooked up to the power supply before the Collectors cut off the comms. No way to get the encryption key.” He cocked his head. “Speaking of, how’d you get them operational?”

 _Anything’s possible when you’ve got a shackled AI at your command, Kaidan._  “Have some good techies on my crew,” she hedged. Kaidan glanced over his shoulder at Garrus, and raised his eyebrows. 

“I see that,” he said. “It’s good to see he’s with you, Shepard.” 

Part of her wanted to peel Kaidan’s words apart and hunt down second meanings, but the dull throbbing in her temples sharpened with an unexpected knife-twist, and all she could do was nod. “Yeah,” she said, when the worst of the pain faded. “It is. Friendly face.” Kaidan’s shoulders dropped into the familiar, apologetic curve 

“Just stating facts, Kaidan. I’m not trying to get a pound of flesh over you not coming with me.” 

Kaidan relaxed minutely. “Commander Shepard, not taking the cheap shot? That’ll be the day.” 

She huffed. “Very funny, Lieutenant. You’re lucky I’m done with fighting for the day.” She shaded her eyes and scanned the clearing. None of the colonists seemed to be suffering anything worse than stiff muscles and dry eyes, but the wide, glassy look in their eyes worried her. “Your squad’s going to have its hands full dealing with this,” she said. “Word of advice?” 

“Commander?” 

“Get them warm, treat them for shock, and put them to work — the ones who are healthy enough. Get them out of their heads, get their hands busy. Best thing to do right now is distract them with repairs. Give them something practical. Something with a solution, even if it’s just sweeping glass.” Her own words sounded lifeless, pounded flat by the creaking in her skull.

“I’ll do that,” said Kaidan. He looked healthier, more  _him_ , with every word, though he shifted restlessly from one foot to the other. “I probably should have said this first, but — thanks, Shepard. I don’t want to think about what would have happened if you hadn’t come when you did.” That swarm got me in the first wave. I was running for my armor, even though I don’t think it would have done much good, and then something got me in the neck. Next thing I knew, I couldn’t move, and everything — people just dropped. Some of them were bleeding, and I — “ 

“Let it go,” said Shepard. “Focus on the mission and move past it, Kaidan. You’re a soldier.” 

_Wise words, Shepard. Take your own advice, for once._

*** 

Shepard staggered across the space between her elevator and her cabin. She had gotten through the briefing without giving away that she felt any pain, though Miranda gave her a sour look when Shepard dismissed everyone at the earliest possible moment. Now her headache — if the constant snarling twist in her head could be called an  _ache_  — filled all the available space in her skull, with needles sunk behind her eyes and in her ears. 

She swiped at the door lock and stumbled in, getting into the shower the only thought that made it beyond the roar of her pulse. Heat and steam would help; they  _had_ to help, or she’d have to call Chakwas, and no doubt Miranda would invite herself along. 

“Shepard?” Nor’s vague, dark figure stood at the top of the steps, with arms half-raised and hands turned palm-up. “Shepard, are you all right?” 

Shepard laughed, even though her jaw throbbed deep in the bone. Headache, indeed. “No,” she said, not caring that Nor chose  _this_  moment to reappear, cryptic as ever. “I don’t think I am.” She lifted her head and gave Nor a weak, sarcastic smile. “Let me guess. You can’t tell me what the Collector did to me.” 

Nor opened her mouth, and shook her head. 

“Figures,” Shepard groaned. She leaned against the fish tank. “Then why the hell are you here? I prefer to do my suffering alone, so if you’re not going to be helpful, get out.” When she shifted to press her forehead against the cool glass, her armor clacked warningly. She plucked at the clasps, but her fingers shook, and she couldn’t get enough pressure to pop open the seals. 

 _Dammit._ She hadn’t felt so weak, so drained, since her first weeks training with biotics. 

No, since the day she woke up in the hospital, flat on her belly, skin grafts covering her back from shoulders to thighs. Since after Akuze. 

She spent a month in the hospital, endured three different skin grafts, and had two visits from her mother before they let her go. By the end, she had bitten the inside of her lip so many times trying not to yell at everyone to just  _leave her alone_  that she gave herself a thick swell of scar tissue. Cerberus took care of that, but Shepard remembered it, and she remembered waking up every night to blank, burned faces, and the echo of fire along her spine. 

The first clasp gave under her fingers. After that, the rest followed, each piece of armor dropped to the floor with a muted clang that left Shepard hissing as the sounds echoed, too-loud, in the cabin. She peeled herself out of her undersuit, eyes closed, and stumbled toward what she hoped was the bathroom. 

 _Wish Cerberus had sprung for voice-activated showers,_  was Shepard’s last clear thought before her fumbling caught the shower lever, and warm water sprayed around her. She tried to stay upright with her shoulders braced against the wall, refusing to give in to the urge to sit down, but when the pressure in her sinuses burst, needle-sharp, she sank down, legs splayed as the water poured down. 

The steam eased her head, but the bright, vicious taste of copper slipped down her throat. She swiped at her mouth with the back of her hand, and it came away slick and red. 

 _Oh, shit._  The image of the colonist, blood crusted at his nose and eyes, swam across her mind’s eye.  _Oh, shit. Should've seen Chakwas._

“Shepard.” 

She let her head fall back against the wall and blinked up at Nor through the steam. “What do you want?” she said, voice slurry. 

“I want to — be helpful.” Nor knelt in front of her. “Will you let me?” 

Shepard glanced down at her hand. The water washed it away, down the drain, in a pink stream. When she looked back at Nor, the spirit’s face twisted, the skin around her scars bunching, and Nor pressed a cool hand to Shepard’s neck, sliding it into her hair. 

“Please,” said Nor. Shepard nodded, leaned into Nor’s touch, and closed her eyes. 

*** 

_Two weeks after Shepard and her mom change ships, pirates attack._

_The attack isn’t that bad, barely enough to strip the paint off the hull, and the_  SSV Eleanor Roosevelt  _takes care of the pirates in short order. Shepard’s fine. She freaked a little when the siren started, and her hands got all sweaty, but she didn’t cry. Not even when her teacher turned off the lights and made everyone hide under their desks. Marcia and Allie started crying, so she held their hands under the desks and squeezed whenever they heard a boom. It’s what her mom would have done — she always said, if you’re strong, it’s your job to help other people be strong. Marcia and Allie stopped crying after a little while, but they kept holding Shepard’s hands until Ms. Kerry gave them the all clear._

_At lunch, Michael Burton — the dickhole — comes over to their table, and Shepard knows exactly what he’s about to do._

_“Go away, Michael,” she says, in a voice just like her mom’s._

_He just laughs at her. “Shut up,_ Shepard _,” he says with a sneer, and she flushes, her stomach all hot and angry. He’s hated her since her first day on this ship, when she asked everyone to call her by her last name, just like her mom. “You think you’re so tough, just ‘cause you didn’t cry like these babies.” He points at Allie, who looks like she’s ready to cry again. “You wouldn’t be so tough if the pirates got on board and sold you to slavers!”_

_“Shut up!” She wants to punch him in the throat. If she knew how, she’d use her biotics to throw him into a wall. He’s always doing things like this, being a jerk even though Shepard knows he was just as scared as everyone else._

_“Slavers! Slavers!” Michael yells, grinning like it’s Christmas.  “Just like all those colonies! They’d put a collar on you and beat you and starve you and you’d never seen your mom again!”_

_Allie’s crying again, and Michael keeps yelling even as Ms. Kerry drags him away to call his parents, but Shepard doesn’t notice. She’s cold, cold all over, because kids go missing all the time in the Terminus, and no one ever finds them._

_She tells herself, don’t cry, don’t be a baby, but she hears Michael yell “Slavers!” one last time and then she’s breathing hard, with a hard tingle in the corners of her eyes. Marcia tries to hug her but Shepard pushes her away and runs, down the hall toward the empty classrooms._

_Ms. Kerry finds her a few minutes later, huddled under her desk._

_“I called your mom. She’ll be here in a few minutes.”_

_Shepard squeezes her eyes shut. Now everyone’ll know she had to have her mom come to make sure she was okay. No one else did, no matter how scared they were. No one else ran away. She’s just a baby. A big stupid baby._

_The door to the classroom opens, and she hears Ms. Kerry talking to her mom, all quiet and intense — the way grown-ups do when they want to talk about kids who are still in the same room. Shepard takes a big gulping breath and tries to stay quiet. She manages it until her mom bends down and crawls under the desk, but then she’s crying, all sloppy and wet and so humiliated she can’t open her eyes_

_Somehow, Mom manages to get both of them out from under the desk. She hugs Shepard, as tight as she can, and kisses the top of her head over and over._

_“I’d never let anything happen to you, sweetie, I promise,” she whispers. “You hear me? I promise you.”_

_“But what if something happens to you?” Shepard sobs, with her face shoved into her mom’s neck. “What if they get you?”_

_“They won’t,” says Mom, but that’s what grown-ups are supposed to say._

_Shepard stays in Mom’s room every night for a week after that, her back pressed up against Mom’s chest and belly. She’s warm and safe, but as soon as she dozes off, she hears Michael yell “Slavers!” and she jerks awake. Mom soothes her back to sleep every time._

_School’s the worst. Michael won’t leave her alone; he keeps pushing her on the stairs or trying to trip her in the lunchroom, and even Allie and Marcia look at her funny. Her mom tries to pack all her favorites for lunch but Shepard can’t eat. She can’t even pay attention in class, because she’s waiting for the lights to go down again. Her hands won’t warm up, no matter how bundled up she gets._

_Mom keeps telling her it’s okay, that nothing will happen, but Shepard can’t believe her. The other kids all have brothers and sisters and moms and dads; she’s just got Mom. And if they get Mom, she’s alone. She won’t even be able to help._

_Two weeks after the attack, Mom picks her up from school, still in her BDUs. There’s an asari with her, a tall, beautiful asari with big brown eyes, who smiles at Shepard as she walks up to them._

_“Sweetie,” says Mom, “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” She’s smiling without showing any teeth, her prettiest smile, and Shepard smiles back and holds out her hand to the asari._

_“Nice to meet you,” she says politely._

_The asari beams at her. “It’s nice to meet you too, Shepard,” she says, with a wink. “I’m Lamia Odrade. I wanted to know if you would join my class.”_

_Shepard frowns. “Class? I’m already in school.”_

_“Oh, not school-class,” says Lamia, with a wave of her hand. “I teach biotics here on the ship. Usually I don’t take anyone under fourteen, but your mother said you were very talented, so I thought we could do a trial. To see if it’s a good fit.”_

_Shepard dares a glance at Mom, who gives her another smile and nods. A whole summer’s worth of butterflies flutter in her stomach, and she can’t help touching her amp. “A trial,” she says, not daring to believe it. If she can learn how to use her biotics — not just how to control them so people don’t get zapped by accident — she won’t have to hide under her desk. She’ll be okay._

_“Does that sound good?” asks Mom._

_Shepard laughs. She can’t decide who to look at, Mom or Lamia. The cold feeling in her hands is gone.“It sounds_  awesome _,” she says, through her laughter, and Mom slings an arm around her shoulder and hugs her close. Lamia smiles at both of them, and points at the elevator at the end of the hall._

_“Shall we get started?”_

_“We shall,” says Shepard, a great bubble of warmth spreading through her chest, and she hugs Mom back, as tight as she can._

_***_

The water was still hot when Shepard opened her eyes. Nor made a pleased noise and slipped her hand out of Shepard’s wet hair, standing and moving away without a word. Through billowing clouds of steam, she saw her twelve-year-old self, all sharp elbows and coltish legs, walking down a hallway with her arm around her mother’s waist. A few months from that memory, Shepard had finally done what she’d been threatening to do, and grown taller than her mother.

 _Never got as tall as Lamia_ , Shepard thought. She still tasted blood down the back of her throat, but now a warm, thick languor diffused itself through her body, blanketing the ache, easing her muscles. 

Lamia had smelled like nutmeg and sweet cloves. Seeing her for the first time, seeing her  _smile_ , all cool asari inscrutability, Shepard had thought she was the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen. Later, she’d discovered Lamia was the second-deadliest women she knew, and tied for the proudest. 

Tied, of course, with her mother. 

“I haven’t thought about that in ages,” she said. She tried to push herself up, using the wall for balance, but sank back down when her knees trembled. Staying under the spray until the water ran cold seemed like a very good idea. “My mom — I don’t want to think about how many strings she pulled to get me into that class.” 

“She did not think about it in such transactional terms,” said Nor. “She wanted you to feel safe. There was no price she would not have paid for that.” She shifted back into view, her head cocked to the side, rivulets of water running over her armor. 

Shepard drew her knees up against her chest. “Is this your introduction to another ‘not everything has a price’ lecture? Because I’m not in the mood.” 

“It is not. I only wanted to stop what was done to you.” 

“About that —“ Shepard flinched at one last surge of pain, and waited for her vision to clear.  _Think about Mom. Think about Lamia. Remember how they showed you to use what hurt you._ “About that,” she said. “What did the Collector do to me? Some kind of…biological weapon? Something that makes you live your worst memories like they’re happening again? Hell of a blow to someone’s morale.”

Nor ignored Shepard’s attempt at levity. Her mouth constricted; Shepard felt her considering her words, weighing how much she could answer. The water turned cool as she waited, and she slapped above her head to shut off the stream. 

“Nor?”

“It was not a Collector,” Nor answered, her voice strained. On reflex, Shepard glanced at Nor’s hands, and saw the raw, red cuts between her fingers before Nor hid them behind her back. The proud little gesture stirred a low hum of pity in Shepard’s gut, and anger too.

“You shouldn’t have done whatever you just did,” she said. “You said it was like a little death, all this forgetting. And you’re forgetting the  _crew_. _”_ She shuddered. “God, you can’t just do that. Someone has to remember.” 

“ _You_  remember them. Their  _friends_  remember them,” said Nor. “I made my choice.” 

“A  _choice?”_ Shepard stood, testing her legs before she took a step. The door of the bathroom hissed open, cool air from the cabin swirling around her. The new skin weave was very good; it broke out into goosebumps just like real skin, but the white marks gleamed bone-white in between freckles. Shepard plucked a towel from her closet and swiped the water from her chest absently. “What did you have to decide?”

“The dead only need me for a moment,” said Nor. A vast ocean of loneliness rose and fell in her voice. “If I am to be here, I should stay loyal to the living. Where the dead go, they have no more need of me. And the living — they ask for so much.” 

For the first time, Shepard considered Nor’s life before she appeared on the  _Normandy:_ watching the living, waiting silently until their deaths called her out of whatever foggy space she called home. And after that — more watching, more waiting. Always trapped between the living and the dead, a knife’s edge of existence. The words  _twilight children_  floated through her head again, and it seemed more like a curse than a name. 

“What do the living ask for?” she dared, still not turning around to look at Nor.  

The spirit stayed silent until Shepard finished dressing and faced her. “Strength,” she said. “The strength that memory can provide.” 

“Is that what you do when you disappear? You go around, giving strength? Is that what G — people ask for?” 

Nor shrugged one-shouldered, almost coy. Shepard blew out a long breath, tempted to keep pushing, but restrained herself. There were other questions, ones with a more immediate focus. She had her ideas about who else could see Nor; she would find out if they were right or wrong in time. All she needed was patience. 

“You said it wasn’t a Collector.” She got no farther before Nor hissed, teeth bared and eyes slitted. 

“It was an  _obscenity_.” Hate and a dull edge of fear poured out of Nor, before she drew them back in with another hiss. 

Shepard realized her mouth was open, and shut it with a click. “So it’s an obscenity. I still don’t have any idea what it was. It looked like a Collector, but when it grabbed me…” She paused, two images colliding in her brain, and gave Nor a hard look. “The colonist Garrus found — that thing did something to him? Like it did to me, right?” 

Nor nodded. Her face smoothed out, the brief ferocity gone, and Shepard knew she had reached the end of Nor’s answers. But she had one more question, and she had to risk it. 

“Are there more?” She expected another shrug, or for Nor to disappear, but Nor only shrank into her armor, eyes downcast. 

“I do not know,” said Nor. “I hope there is only the one.” Before Shepard could say another word, Nor gave her a smile, a very clear  _your time is up, thanks for playing_  smile, and pointed at Shepard’s terminal. “You should call your mother,” she said, and vanished the instant Shepard turned her head. 

***  

When the call ended, Shepard stared at her reflection in the display case. She had expected to feel reduced, somehow, at the end of the call. Disowned. Amputated, like a mangled limb. Instead, she felt — warmed. Safe and sound, the way she did as a child, listening to her mother fall asleep in the next room. 

She wiped her cheeks absently. They’d both cried as they stumbled through the first wrenching, awkward minutes, and Shepard added her mother’s slapped, stunned expression to the pile of guilt. One more mark against her. 

 _Chin up, shoulders back._  She blew out a long, shuddering breath and straightened.  _You are still your mother’s daughter._

Hannah had said as much, once the first shocked silence was over.  _You’re alive. My girl’s alive._

 _Yes, Mom. Your girl._ Shepard turned away from her reflection. Her terminal chimed a reminder for her evening briefing with Miranda. She wanted to delay it, but Miranda would want a full rundown of what happened on Horizon, and Shepard knew Miranda would feel no compunction at pinning her down in her quarters. Better to steel herself, hide the last traces of any tears, and forge ahead. 

Shepard wiped her cheeks again on her way into the bathroom. In the mirror, she looked paler than ever, almost bloodless, with pitted dark circles under her eyes. 

 _Six hours of sleep tonight, I promise,_  she thought at her reflection, which raised an eyebrow, dubious.  _All right. Four. As much as I can get before I’m up and pacing._  She splashed handful after cool handful of water on her face and tucked her hair behind her ears. It reached the middle of her neck now, a heavy mass of coarse strands, long enough to pull into a tail just above her amp. With it pulled away from her face, she looked almost like herself again, even without the scar lanced across her cheek.

 _Breathe it out._  Shepard did, and exhaled the last of Horizon. 

Her eyes ached as she walked into the elevator, but no one except Miranda would be looking closely enough to see how bloodshot they were. Unless Shepard missed her guess — unless Miranda had decided to allow Shepard a little privacy for once — Miranda already knew, to the tear, how much Shepard had cried and why. Any comments about red eyes would be in bad taste, and Miranda would never stoop so low. 

The shift change had left the mess hall empty, except for a dark-haired ensign who saluted silently before scuttling for a sleeping pod, her gaze never quite meeting Shepard’s. She debated telling Miranda to send another reminder to get them to stop, but discarded it. The crew wasn’t Alliance, but they were making the effort to make her feel as at home as possible. If they still insisted on the gesture, she needed to allow them that much. Trust had been built on weaker foundations. 

_Like waiting to call your mother a month and a half after you come back from the dead. Not a very good beginning, even by your standards._

She swiped her fingertips over her cheeks again, just to be sure, and reached out for the door lock as a soft footfall echoed behind her, then a gathered silence. 

“Shepard?” 

She smiled, an instant and then gone. When she turned around to face Garrus, she knew her face was smooth as still water. “Garrus. Recovered?” 

“As far as these things tend to go for us, I think I came out pretty well.” He took a step that carried him farther into her space than he had been since Omega. Shepard waited, without speaking, until he cleared his throat. “You, ah — is everything all right? You look…well, I see a little wear, Shepard. Today was rough.” 

“We’ve been through worse,” she hedged. “But today was…today was a mess. Even by our standards.” 

“Our standards,” Garrus said, “have always needed some readjustment.” 

“Yeah,” she said, more of a sigh than a word, too relieved that the thaw hadn’t been wishful thinking. Garrus noticed almost everything, but he wouldn’t comment unless he felt it was warranted. Unless he felt  _something._ Shepard gave herself an inner shake. The impulse to clasp her hands behind her back pushed insistently at her muscles, but she kept her arms loose at her sides. “I’m fine. I was just talking to my mother.” 

Garrus nodded, eyes intent on hers. Shepard wondered exactly how much he surmised from her blister-red eyes.  _Probably enough_ , she mused ruefully _, he worked with a lot of humans even before he came to the_  Normandy. 

“Was this the first time you two have talked, since —?” he asked, and Shepard gave him a dry, tight smile. “Ah. I see.” He opened his hands, his mandibles flicking in a smile of his own, just as dry as hers. “You’ve been running non-stop since I came aboard. And you were — you had your reasons. At least she found out from you, in the end.” 

He sounded so reassuring, so forgiving, that Shepard had to look away. She focused on the bulkhead, blinking hard. “She’s the only one I’ve got, Garrus,” she said, through the rich taste of salt at the back of her tongue. “She should have been my first call.” Her voice wavered. Even the steel in her spine was a reminder of what she’d left behind, and of what she’d neglected. 

At Garrus’ blank look, she regretted saying anything at all. The thaw didn’t go as deep as she hoped. 

“I’m not one to judge,” he said slowly, like every word was an ancient, frayed thread on the verge of snapping, “I haven’t spoken to my father yet.” 

“So he doesn’t even know you’re alive?” Shepard tried to cover her mouth before the words escaped, but they slipped around her fingers. “Oh, God, what an awful thing to say.” 

“It’s no worse than what I deserve,” he said. His voice came out flat as a sheet of tin and about as colorful. 

“Looks like neither of us’ll be winning awards for children of the year,” she said. 

Garrus gave her another flicker of a smile. “No, we won’t.” He shifted. “I should get back to work, there’s —“ 

“Right.” She reached out, unwilling to let the moment slide past them without something more, and slid her hand down the slick surface of his armor. “Thank you, for checking on me.” 

He glanced down at her hand, his face tight and unreadable. Shepard pulled her hand back with an apology already forming, but his fingers caught hers in a brief squeeze. 

 _Oh._  Was she this starved for comfort that even the slightest touch made her breath catch? Apparently so. Her eyes pricked; she was tired, tired of the fight already, but there was this moment, and the memory of her mother’s voice.  _My girl’s alive._

 _I am_ , she thought, as Garrus began to let go of her hand.  _I’m alive. Still fighting._

“I’d offer to give you a hug,” said Garrus, each word wrapped in deliberate hesitancy , “but I’m sure you know that turians are terrible at it.” He waited for a response, the tips of his fingers finally leaving hers, and Shepard felt the faintest sideways lurch as the ice in her head broke apart. The relief at something coming free made her giddy. 

“It’s the thought that counts,” she said, then corrected herself. “And gold star for effort.” A blaze of warmth banished the last of Akuze and Horizon when Garrus peered at her, a real smile flaring across his face. 

“Gold star,” he echoed. “Right.” 


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the long delay in posting! Life intruded, but now I'm back!

Miranda handed the datapad back to Shepard. “You’ve only allotted a week, shiptime, to these missions? Shepard, I’m an expert on your particular brand of efficiency, but this seems wildly optimistic.”  

“Finding our next two candidates will take up the bulk of that time. Once we reach them, it’s a simple yes or no question. They say no, we move on.” Shepard ran her thumb along the edge of the datapad instead of biting her lip. “I don’t want to waste time on charm and finesse. In any case, I’d like to give the crew a chance to catch their breath. It might be the last opportunity we get, but a week is all we can afford.” 

Miranda raised an eyebrow. “I hardly think shooting a krogan in the belly counts as _finesse_ , but I see your point.” A thin frown line nicked the smooth skin between her brows. “I’ll revise the leave schedule and have it ready for you by tomorrow’s morning briefing.” 

“Appreciated, Miranda. Anything else we need to discuss?” 

“Actually, yes,” Miranda answered, and lifted a datapad out of the stack on her desk without looking. “There is one last thing.”  

“Go ahead.” Shepard folded her arms and waited. “More _visitations_ in the Omega Nebula?” 

“No, none have been sighted in eight days. Well, none have been _reported_ in eight days. It’s possible other ships have experienced the phenomenon, but haven’t reported it.”  

“So what’s the issue?” Shepard asked. 

Miranda’s eyes flickered, and she dropped her gaze to the desk for a heartbeat. For Miranda, the tiny break in her glacial calm was as obvious as an avalanche. Shepard dropped her arms and held out a hand, palm-up. 

“Sorry, Miranda. Poor choice of words. Go on.” 

“There’s no need to apologize,” said Miranda, the subtle note of freezing condescension ringing in her voice again. “It’s no pleasure of mine to have to ask you for help. I find it —“  

“Unpleasant?” Shepard volunteered. Miranda did look like she had stepped in varren shit. 

“Yes,” said Miranda. She clasped her hands on top of her datapad, and held Shepard’s eyes without blinking. “It’s personal, and very delicate.” 

“Are you sure I’m the right person to be asking for help, then?” Shepard smiled when Miranda offered her a tiny smirk. “All jokes aside, Miranda, you’re part of my crew. What do you need?”  

“An extra day on Ilium,” she said, “and an advance on my salary, which I need you to authorize.” 

Shepard’s first instinct was to ask _what the hell for?_ She restrained it with a massive effort, along with the matching facial expression. “I made it clear a week is stretching it, Miranda. I don’t want you to feel like you have to give me any details that you’re uncomfortable sharing, but is this something you can take care of during your allotted leave?” 

“No,” said Miranda, emphatic as iron. A breath later, the iron melted away and her mouth quivered. “It isn’t. Shepard, you’ve read my file. You know about my father.” 

“Yes,” said Shepard, on a slow twist of dread. Henry Lawson: rich enough to make Croesus blush, but with flexible morals — and questionable friends. “He wanted to create a dynasty, starting with his daughter.” She left out the part about _extensive, experimental genetic modifications_. “You disagreed, and you parted ways.” 

“A neat summary,” said Miranda. “But my father was set on achieving his goals.”

“He tried again, didn’t he?” 

Miranda nodded. “I have a sister. A genetic twin.” Before Shepard could begin to process the idea of two Mirandas, she went on, a slight catch in her voice the only sign that betrayed any emotion. “Her name’s Oriana.” 

_How much did it just cost you to tell me that much, Miranda? Not that I have any room to talk._ “And you want to get her away from your father?”  

“In a sense.” Miranda gave Shepard a thin, icy smile. “I already did the hard work, years ago. I took her from his house — from his _control —_ and placed with her a family, in secret. I’ve kept tabs on her ever since, without her knowing. She has a good life, a safe life, where she can choose exactly what she wants to be.” 

“So far I’m not seeing a problem,” said Shepard, raising an eyebrow. “Unless your father’s caught wind of her.”  

Miranda blinked, a fraction of a second too long. 

“Ah.” 

“I’ve got a contact on Ilium. Lanteia, an asari. She specializes in — shall we say, discreet relocations. Oriana and her parents are there, waiting to be moved to their new home.” Miranda clasped her hands under her chin, then dropped them to her desk, glaring at them as if they had given her away on their own. “But Lanteia’s gotten intel that my father’s on-planet, and I know he’s looking for her. I just _know_ it.” 

“Miranda.” Shepard held up a hand. Miranda’s eyes narrowed in annoyance at being interrupted, but she hid the expression almost immediately. Shepard kept her face neutral, and schooled her voice to be the same. “What do you need me to do?”  

Miranda stopped mid-sentence. “What?” she said. “Shepard, I don’t need your _help_. I need _one day._ ”  

“You need someone to watch your back, otherwise you’re going in blind against whatever your father’s got planned.” Shepard leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “And is that a risk you want to take with your sister’s safety?”

“Shepard, you don’t know what my father is capable of.” 

“No, but you know what _I’m_ capable of. Who would you bet on?” 

Miranda’s face shuttered, but Shepard sensed it was an attempt to hide a smile. “Considering the fact that you’re my greatest accomplishment, Shepard, I’m obligated to bet on you.” 

“If that’s a yes, Miranda, you could probably manage a more gracious one.” When Miranda looked up, eyes dark, Shepard grinned. “But I’ll take it. You’ve got your day, and your advance — provided I go with you. Oriana and her family will be fine.”  

The mercenary part of her brain — the one that would never be tamed, no matter how many times her trust was vindicated, the one that saw everything as a transaction — whispered about leverage and loyalty, but Shepard ignored it. Miranda had a family; Miranda had one person in the galaxy she loved. For years, Shepard had been the same way, and while her world had opened, while her family had grown, she still knew the dark, bloodhound instinct to protect her family. 

Oh, did she know it. 

“Miranda?” Shepard cocked her head. 

Miranda stared at her hands a few moments longer, then nodded, her mouth softening. “Thank you, Shepard,” she said, with a hint of warmth that she dissolved with a shake of her head. Shepard let it pass;  “I think our first move should be visiting your old friend, Dr. T’Soni. She’s set herself up as quite the information broker. She should be able to point us in the right direction.”  

“It’ll be good to see her again,” said Shepard absently, as a chill ringed her mouth. “Who do we start with? The assassin, or the justicar?” 

 *** 

If Shepard expected to slip through Ilium unnoticed, the smiling asari waiting as soon as she and Miranda left the _Normandy_ disabused her of the notion.  

“Commander Shepard.” The asari spread her arms. “Welcome to Nos Astra. I trust you had a safe journey?”  

Shepard smiled, too wide and too bright. “Thank you. And how, exactly did you know it was me?” 

“Shepard,” Miranda said around a sigh.  

The asari’s smile stayed in place, though her arms slumped back to her sides. “Oh, the _Normandy_ is known wherever it goes, Commander. And even if it weren’t, Liara T’Soni left explicit instructions that the ship was to be met as soon as it docked, and offered every convenience. She’s paid your docking fees as well.”  

“I’d like to speak with Liara,” said Shepard, choosing to ignore the rill of disquiet that ran through her at the thought of Liara’s little gesture . “Can you direct us to her office?”  

“Oh, _yes._ ” The asari beamed, as if nothing would please her more. “I’d be happy to send directions to your omni-tool. She asked to see you as soon as possible, after all.” 

Shepard glanced up from her omni-tool. The leading edge in the asari’s voice made the skin on the back of her neck crawl. Too familiar by half, just like Sha’ira, with all her touches and wide eyes. “Thank you,” she said, pulling her smile back to bare a few more teeth. “Your help is most appreciated.” Before the asari could respond, she brushed past, with Miranda trailing after her.  

“That was clumsily handled, Shepard,” Miranda admonished. “She was only trying to be polite.” 

Shepard shrugged. “Politely over-invested, maybe. There were enough tabloid rumors about me and Liara the first go-around. I’d rather avoid that now. We’re here to gather intel, nothing more.” 

Miranda rolled her eyes, but kept her silence as they passed through the first layer of Nos Astra. The air was cool and limpid, scented by invisible flowers; no one dared to raise their voice above a polite murmur as they went about their business. Every surface gleamed, and redundant, sound-absorbing barriers dampened the rush of the skycars overhead . A pleasure-planet, decadent and besotted with itself. It made Shepard think of a Venus flytrap: sweet-tasting, but a devourer at its heart. She didn’t look up at the wide bowl of the sky, or the buildings that towered around the port, and ignored the stares that greeted her every four or five steps. 

_So much for anonymity_ , she thought, rueful, thinking of the curly-haired woman and her turian friend on the Citadel. No one on Ilium pointed — no one would be so crude — but she got her fair share of double-takes, and one volus even paused for breath in a negotiation as she passed.  

“Shepard, we’re here.” Miranda looked pointedly at a flight of stairs. “I can wait here, if you’d prefer to speak with Dr. T’Soni in private.” 

She considered the idea, but discarded it immediately. If it benefitted the mission, Miranda needed to hear it, and Shepard gained nothing by withholding information, even on a temporary basis. 

Besides, she and Liara never had privacy before; all their _embracing eternity_ had been done in front of an audience. Shepard’s choice, not Liara’s.  

“I don’t plan on saying anything you can’t hear, Miranda,” she said. “And I’d appreciate your input on whatever intel Liara gives us.” 

Miranda nodded, her face smoothing into wax-doll perfection — her business face, all professional disinterest and the slightest hint of veiled disdain. Shepard gave a tiny shake of her head, but said nothing. By that point, Miranda’s arrogance was terminal. No use in convincing her it wasn’t necessary.

_Wonder what Liara’d think of the inside of my brain now_ , Shepard thought, jogging up the stairs to be greeted by a languid asari maiden sitting behind a desk _. Probably go screaming back to her ruins after a single glance._

On the first _Normandy,_ Liara’s sympathetic looks and halting attempts to draw Shepard out — the words _deep sadness_ had been used, to Shepard’s eternal embarrassment — only stopped after Shepard sat her down for a much-needed conversation about _boundaries._ The meld might have given Liara a window into Shepard’s past, but it did not give her the right to discuss anything she saw there. 

And now Liara was an information broker. A licensed, fully accredited information broker, cool and professional even when delivering threats. But not too much the professional that she scrupled at hugging Shepard within an inch of her life as soon as Shepard stepped through the door of her office, armor and personal space be damned. 

*** 

The office closed in around Shepard: four walls, too many windows, the gentle hum of top-grade electronics, and, when she inhaled, her lungs billowed with warm, humid air. A comfortable chair cradled her back and thighs; she felt the armrests under her hands, her gloves the only things that stopped her nails from digging gouges into the fabric. 

“They told me they could bring you back,” said Liara, her voice hushed. “Was I wrong, Shepard? To have done what I did?”

The only sound in Shepard’s head was the low sighing of wind as it passed through snow and rock. When she shifted, Liara’s office bled away into pure, dazzling white, and the sound of Miranda changing position became the crunch of her boots through a thin crust of ice. 

“You gave me to Cerberus,” she said, through numb, frozen lips. “You went to Alchera.” 

“Not alone — I had help.” Liara flushed, mistaking Shepard’s hesitation for disbelief. “A friend, an unexpected friend. He got us in before the Shadow Broker’s agents could get to you and — Shepard? Are you all right?” 

Shepard smoothed her hair away from her cheeks. “I’m surprised,” she said slowly. Surprised, yes; so deeply it became shock: chilly, hungry shock. “But why?” 

Liara flushed again, her cheeks indigo under her freckles. “You know why,” she replied, her gaze on her terminal. “We needed you. The entire galaxy needed you. And I suppose…I couldn’t let you go. You, the crew of the _Normandy_ , you were the closest to family I’d had in years. I didn’t know how to live without all of you. When Cerberus said there was a chance, I didn’t think. I just acted. Was I wrong?” 

Shepard’s fingers twisted in her hair. She forced herself to let go, and lowered her hands to her lap. Her head echoed with the sound of metal scraping against metal, and her stomach knotted. Garrus’ armored fists, clenching over and over: metal on metal. She had done that to him, she had _left him_ on Omega. Guilt as thick and slow as honey filled her to brimming, a thin film of anger rising in her as she met Liara’s limpid, pleading gaze.

_What makes you so goddamn sure I wasn’t better where I was?_  

Three worlds layered on top of each other: Ilium, Alchera, and Omega. Luxury and warmth, ice and wind — and what had Omega been? Peace? Rest? 

“I don’t know, Liara,” she said at last. “I can’t say.” _Goddammit, why couldn’t you have left me alone?_

Liara’s careful posture, as exquisite as her dress, collapsed. “Shepard, I only wanted to help,” she said, not quite an apology, not quite a reproach — and all Liara, still seeking approval.

At the sound of Liara’s voice, Alchera and Omega dropped away from Shepard’s vision. Ilium was all that remained, filled with too many eager ears. A hive of queens, with plenty of drones to listen in. 

“I understand that, Liara.” Shepard tempered her voice. “And I do…appreciate, what you did.” She heard the tiny metallic echo in her head again, and fought the impulse to shut her eyes. She could bear Liara’s tears and pleas, but not that sound again — the sound-sum of all she hadn’t done since she found him on Omega _._

_Found him for the_ second _time_ , she amended, and dug her fingers deep into the chair arms. 

She had built walls around him instead to keep everyone else from prying, and then left him to his grief. Turians didn’t cry, but they keened, low and lost, like a dirge. That was what she left Garrus to, along with whatever memories they should have shared. Pushing was what she _did_ ; she slammed through obstacles or danced around them, she didn’t sit and wait, debating options until her hands and eyes ached. 

Why the hesitation? A simple question: _do you remember me, Garrus?_

Because remembering _hurt_ ; it meant second-guessing every decision she had made since waking up on a plastic slab. She had avoided introspection since Akuze, ever since looking back meant looking into the face of hell. So she did her job, fought the fights she was handed, and she didn’t look back. She was a weapon, not a person. Not a daughter, not a friend, not a lover. Singular in purpose, and completely alone. 

_“I’m so used to fighting and now I can’t. It’s like I don’t know what to do without a gun in my hand. Who am I if I can’t fight?”_

_"You aren’t just your battles.”_

_“I’m a soldier, Garrus. That’s all I know.”_

_"I know you’re more. Dead or not, you’re the best friend I’ve ever had. My squad is my family, but I couldn’t do this without you.”_

At some point, he had to. She left Garrus, and then he lost the squad. And if the two were linked — 

_If I had forced him to talk to me, would hearing this hurt me any less?_

No, it wouldn’t, but knowing that to a certainty didn’t make her waste of time, her lack of _courage_ , any less unforgivable. 

“I had to bring you back,” said Liara, an apology spun underneath her words. 

_It was never about you, Liara._ Shepard lifted her head. “Thank you,” she said, when she could speak, and every word tasted like dirt. Before Liara could go on, Shepard held up a hand. “I mean it, Liara. Thank you.” So close to a lie, so bitter it choked her. 

Metal against metal. Shepard finally let her eyes close, just for a moment, and felt the ice in her head begin to break. Too little, too late. 

*** 

Shepard held no illusions: for the first two months of her new life, shock had been woven through her like an extra layer of fat or muscle, insulating her from sharp corners. From _remembering._ How else would she have been able to avoid dealing with the business of being alive? She barely talked to Joker; even her messages checking on Kaidan had been written in a spirit of penance: a way of paying off the sin of coming back to life. 

_You’re alive now, Shepard_ , she thought. _Time to act like it. No more running, no more excuses._

_It’s time to remember. All of it._

“Shepard?” 

“What is it, Miranda?” She stopped, and turned around to meet Miranda’s gaze. 

“I assure you, I didn’t know about Dr. T’Soni’s involvement.” Miranda’s eyelids flickered. “Perhaps I should have realized it was thanks to her that we recovered you, after all. I apologize for any — 

Sympathy, from Miranda. _I need to work on my poker face._ “It’s fine, Miranda,” she said. “I should have asked.” 

*** 

With five days of the eight gone and past, Shepard made her way up to the cockpit. Joker would complain regardless of how often Shepard managed to visit him — _hey Commander must be nice to you know, get off the ship, but hey, it’s cool, I’ll just hang out up here with the ship cancer and make sure we don’t explode_ _—_ but even by her standards, she’d been neglecting him. 

_To be fair,_ she told herself on the elevator, _he would have asked about Liara, and if I’m letting Miranda see how bad that threw me, Joker couldn’t miss it either_. 

But: alive. She had connections to maintain, treasured ones. 

_Even if it’s Joker_. She smiled, her steps lighter as she got closer to the cockpit. Joker didn’t turn around as she approached, but the tilt of his head warned her: sarcasm incoming. She braced herself, her smile still growing. 

“So…Garrus and your tank baby weren’t enough for you, Shepard? You need a badass from every species?” Joker tugged down his cap and shook his head. “The justicar’s one thing, but I didn’t even know drell came in silent and deadly.” 

“Don’t let Thane hear you say that,” Shepard mock-scolded. “He said he’s been training for this since he was six.” 

“Wow. Makes the rest of you look like slackers.” 

“Joker.”

“What? Just sayin’, always something to aspire to.” Joker turned his chair around. “So what’s next? You’re kinda running out of species, unless you’ve got a biotic volus in those dossiers.” 

“Don’t knock it, we’ll need all the help we can get.” Shepard rubbed the back of her neck, just under her amp. “Just have one last errand left. Helping Miranda out.” 

Joker raised an eyebrow. “The Efficiency Queen has a problem she can’t solve on her own?” 

“More like one she wants a little back-up with,” said Shepard, skating up to the edge of the truth. “It’ll be quick. In and out.” 

He snorted. “I’ve heard that before. Ilos, anyone?” 

Shepard patted the top of his seat. “Totally different. Worst we’ll be facing is a bunch of Eclipse mercs.” 

*** 

“When I started at C-Sec, I heard Ilium was a beacon for the Terminus Systems,” said Garrus from his perch, fifty feet behind Shepard. “Something for the rest of the worlds to aspire to.” He made a rough, disgusted noise. “I know better now. Half of the contraband coming through Omega passed through here first.” 

“It’s got better PR, that’s all,” said Miranda over the comms. “And cleaning crews. Eclipse mercs are on the payroll for half the businesses, and the other half try to slide under their radar.” 

Garrus didn’t respond. Shepard winced inwardly and faced forward, an echo of the familiar ache in her throat. What Garrus said marked the first time he’d referred to Omega without someone pressing him, however obliquely. The faces of his squad must be crowding close, the memories of ops and briefings suffocating him — 

Under its frozen surface, shapes moved in the well, scraps of memory lost in the silent dark, with muffled, barely audible voices teasing her ears.  

*** 

_“Heavy mech closin’!” yells a human male’s voice. “Frag out!”_

_Super-heated air rushes past her, warmth on her neck and cheeks. Ahead of her, Garrus staggers as the explosion topples the crates the squad is using for cover._

The squad? Shepard blinked the images and voices away, pulling Ilium back into focus. _Not now,_ she told herself. _Keep it together. This is the last push._ She eased up, shotgun balanced against her hip, sweeping the room. Just in time: she caught the tip of an armored boot sliding back into cover. 

“Movement up ahead, thirty feet,” she whispered into her comms. “Miranda, scan for mechs, I don’t want any surprises.” 

“Copy that, Shepard.” 

“Garrus, get ready for Overload — they’ll have drones, so they’re all yours. Miranda and I will take care of the troops, you just make sure no one flanks us.” She turned, ready to sink back into cover until Miranda’s scan finished, but light glinting off white ceramics caught her gaze. 

*** 

_An_ YMIR _powers up, just out of Weaver’s scanning range. Shepard flashes into being next to it, scanning for more mechs, more mercs. Small blessings; this YMIR’s the only one Eclipse brought to the party — but it’s more than enough to tear the squad apart if Garrus doesn’t_ listen _and get them out._

_A Mantis fires off a shot from behind Garrus; a LOKI topples, its head gone. Shepard whips around, thankful and furious in equal measure._ You idiot _she thinks._ Dammit, Garrus, what’re you thinking?

_“Boss! Boss, I got through, the hack won’t hold long but we’re here.”_ _A girl’s voice, exhilarated, almost giddy. Weaver’s voice._

_“Pull back!” Garrus roars. His voice cuts through the rumble and stutter of the mechs; Shepard hears him as easily as she did when she was alive. “I’m sending Erash and Melanis out. I want you to cover them — get a drone behind you.”_

_Mierin squawks, and another burst of static wipes out her voice._ I’m hearing what Garrus does, _Shepard realizes,_ it’s like I’m in his head. _She doesn’t have time for consideration; the YMIR is moving closer to the squad, a low banked whirr leaking out of it._

_It’s ready to fire._

“Shepard! Mechs closing!” 

Miranda’s voice. 

“The YMIR,” Shepard rasped, caught between worlds. _No, it’s not, it’s just a LOKI._

_“Now go!” Garrus shouts, deep in her head._

_Where am I?_

_I’m alive. Alive._

_***_

A concussive round slammed into her chest, and Shepard’s barriers died with a spark and a whine. She staggered backwards into the warehouse aisle, her amp jangling a warning when she tried to Charge. Ilium slid back into focus, and the voices of the squad died, Weaver shouting for Melanis to move — 

She didn’t even know who Weaver and Melanis were. 

Omega swallowed her again. 

*** 

_A shotgun blast; a strangled yell of pain. Shepard flashes across the room, following the voice. Garrus slumps against a crate, his hand against his neck._

_“Garrus!” Blood covers his armor; the wound on his neck gapes wide. His eyes fix on hers, bleary and stunned._

_He won’t be joining her. She won’t let it happen. Shepard lifts her head, searching out the YMIR._

_“Shepard —“_

_***_

“Shepard, get down!” Garrus roared behind her. “I can’t get a shot if you don’t move!” 

She tried to pull in enough breath to yell back at him, but a second round caught her in the gut and she sprawled on her back, the pain making her grey out for a few seconds before she managed to roll back into cover. 

“Shepard! Shepard, talk to me!” 

“Stay where you are, I’m fine,” she wheezed, pressing a hand to her ribs. If she’d broken them again, she’d never hear the end of it from Chakwas. “Going to be a few minutes before I can use my amp again, I think it’s overheating.” 

“I don’t care about your damn amp! Stay down, I’m coming to you.” 

A sharp crack cut across the comms. Sniper rifle fire; Garrus planned to move. Shepard tried to yell for Garrus to stay where he was, but inhaling sent pain spiraling across her chest. Bruised ribs, at least. She fumbled for a medi-gel pack and slid it into place as Garrus threw himself next to her. 

“I gave you an order, Garrus,” she said through a groan, counting the seconds before cool relief hit. “What’s your excuse for disobeying?” _Again. What’s your excuse for disobeying_ again?

The ice cracked, and she flinched, memory slicing through her head in an ink-dark wave. Fury, terror, and at the center, desperation: _I won’t let it happen._

And then what? 

_Ice. Wind. It took so long to find my way back. I was cold, so cold —_

“You playing fast and loose with your barriers, as usual,” he said, mandibles fluttering. “Medi-gel?”

“Already got it,” she said. With every word, breathing came easier and Ilium solidified around her; she let her eyes close for a few seconds to enjoy it. “How’s it looking out there, Miranda?” She needed to focus, hold Omega at bay. Her head ached to match the burning in her ribs. 

“We’ve got a cluster of mechs about 100 meters ahead. They’re too close together for me to tell if they’ve got any heavies waiting for us.” Miranda appeared around a crate, SMG held high. “So I think we can safely assume that they do.” 

“Planning for the worst,” said Garrus. “Good idea. Maybe we’ll be disappointed.” 

Shepard laughed, grateful that the medi-gel had taken care of the burning in her ribs. “You’d be more disappointed if there weren’t any more mechs to fight, Garrus. Don’t try to tell me otherwise.” She grabbed his arm and levered herself up, leaning against the crate at her back while she tested her amp. Loose, but usable as long as she didn’t get too creative. “I’m going to have to stick with Shockwaves and Pulls,” she said. “I don’t want to risk Charging until I’m sure of the spike again.” 

“Makes my job easier.” Garrus gave her a quick grin, just light gleaming on the edge of a blade. 

Shepard caught herself before his grin sent her skidding off again, lost among the ice floes of shifting memory. “All right,” she said. “Let’s move. Still got a lot of mercs between us and Oriana.” The medi-gel would hold her together until they got to the other side, as long as she didn’t let Omega pull her back. 

She only realized she still had her hand wrapped around Garrus’ arm when he lifted it away, another grin flaring his mandibles, gone just as quickly as the last. 

*** 

At first glance, Oriana looked nothing like Miranda. For one thing, she actually _smiled._ And often, too: at her parents, at people who jostled her as they moved through the port, and at Miranda, as she approached. A beat later, Oriana’s gaze sharpened, and while her smile lost none of its sweetness, it gained a cold edge of calculation. 

_Ah_ , Shepard thought. _There’s the family resemblance._

“So that’s her sister,” said Garrus, speaking for the first time since they dealt with Niket. “Looks like she and her family are in one piece.” 

Shepard hummed, and felt Garrus’ shift next to her. A tiny movement, just two hands clenching into fists, metal on metal. “Looks like,” she said, trying not show the way the sound carved at her ears, and centered herself around her memories. 

They were cold, fragile from their tumble under the ice, but when she cupped her hands around them, they warmed and flared to life. A well, a tidepool, an ocean: the way was open, if she would just take it. 

“At least we didn’t have to deal with an YMIR this time,” she said. Garrus nodded, not looking at her, and she pushed ahead, her pulse pounding in her tongue. “The last time didn’t really work out for us, even with —“ Her voice failed her, briefly, and she pushed again, willing the memories to blossom. “Even with Weaver’s drones,” she said, and kept her eyes ahead as Garrus went deadly still at her side. 

“Shepard,” he said, voice a low murmur, almost lost in the hum of the crowd. 

“Melanis,” she said, “she got shot. And Weaver’s drones didn’t work at first. I told you to get out, and you didn’t listen. And then I —“ 

_Cold and wind. The mountains rising forever over her head. Lost and so far from home, from warmth and light and the subtle dance of blood under his hide._

“I went away, didn’t I?” She finally turned to look at him. “I did something, and I was gone.” 

Garrus nodded once, almost a shiver, but didn’t shift his gaze to her. He stared, without blinking, at Miranda and Oriana. 

“But I came back.” 

Garrus inhaled, sharp and greedy, like he had finally allowed himself to breathe. “You came back,” he said, and locked his hand around her wrist. “Shepard, you — what are you saying?” 

It was cruel, but she waited until he met her gaze to speak. “Pieces, that’s all I’ve got,” she said. “Pieces of Omega, of the — of the squad —“ 

_Oh God, the squad_ , she thought, and forced herself to keep going before dry grief froze her throat — “and of you.” She half-expected the chill to frost her mouth and eyes as she spoke, but she felt warmth, a flush spreading under her skin, until her hands throbbed and her throat burned. 

“I remember you.” 

Garrus’ hand tightened on her wrist, a spasm flickering through his fingers, before he loosened his grip and slid his hand up her arm. Shepard sucked in a breath; part of her screamed against the contact — they were so public, so exposed, and this felt too intimate for Ilium — glittering Ilium, with its filthy hands and lying smiles. This was theirs: their flame to build, their world to remember. 

But she had been too hungry for too long, for this touch; she’d waited too long for these memories. She’d made Garrus wait too long, and by the half-starved look in his eyes, he needed that contact as much as she did. Still, he read the hesitation in her face with a glance, and offered another smile, this one as achingly familiar and wistful as his hand on her arm. 

“You said this made it easier to find the way,” Garrus said, ghosting his hand to her shoulder before letting it fall. 


	34. Chapter 34

Shepard stared at Garrus, and Garrus stared back. 

She tried to think of a reply — anything, something to hold the fragile moment together, with all its half-spoken implications — but nothing came to mind. Her mouth stayed stubbornly shut, her tongue rested innocently between her teeth. Garrus had stolen every word out of her head with a single sentence. _You said this made it easier to find the way._

Had she? Her mouth and throat didn’t recognize the words, if they were hers. But the old sideways twist caught her head, and the well spat out a scrap of memory, ragged at the edges. 

“Over the hills, and far away,” she said, before she could consider the words, or the dim, milky images that went along with them. 

_Garrus’ face, pinched and shocked, everything from the slump of his shoulders to the graceless way he moves toward her a silent reproach. When he touches her, low warmth slides through her, and she finally feels the ground under her feet._

Garrus blinked for the first time since his hand had left her arm. He opened his mouth, a few stuttered syllables leaking out before he forced his voice through. “I didn’t think I’d ever hear that from you again.” He sighed, the sound unmoored and uncertain. 

“I’m sorry,” said Shepard, dizzy from the tug of two opposing tides: guilt, for leaving him locked in this silence alone for so long, and a dawning exhilaration. She wasn’t crazy — not any more than usual, at least, and now that Garrus had started to look at her again, he didn’t seem to want to stop. A laugh settled under her ribs, waiting to be released, and she had to focus to keep it in place. The truth still hung between them, waiting for one of them to lay claim to it. 

_I owe him this much,_ she thought, as Nos Astra spun on around them, busy and dirty as an anthill. _I have to be the one to say it._

“So,” she said, fighting a grin and a laugh now, “so I was dead —“ 

“Yes,” said Garrus, too quickly. “You were. And you were —“

“On Omega, with you.” Shepard waited, drinking in the sight of him as her words reached him. Garrus shuddered, but he opened to her, like dry earth to rain, or kindling to a fire. 

“I’ve got…I don’t know if I can call them memories, and none of this makes _any_ sense, but Garrus, I remember _you._ ” She licked her lips, and Garrus’ gaze followed the tip of her tongue, a flash of hunger touching his face before fading away. 

“Shepard,” Garrus said, drawing her gaze back to his. “This is — oh, damn.” He huffed a laugh, low and frustrated, his gaze traveling around the port. As Shepard watched, he stiffened, and his head dropped between his shoulders. “Perfect timing.” 

“Miranda’s coming back, isn’t she?” At Garrus’ nod, Shepard groaned. “Perfect timing, my ass.” She couldn’t help the grin that quirked the corners of her mouth. His mandibles twitched, even as he took a reluctant step away from her. The impulse to follow him and stay, mercifully brief, surged through her. 

She had time to murmur “Meet me at the bar,” before Miranda drifted into earshot, wearing tears on her cheeks and an expression that dared Shepard to say anything. Shepard kept her silence, all the way back to the _Normandy,_ all through the longest walk she could remember. 

***

The bartender gave Shepard a long, appreciative look as she handed over her whiskey — a double, because nothing less would get Shepard through this conversation. 

“Looking good, hon,” said the asari. “Got a date?” 

Shepard laughed, a flush gathering in her cheeks, and scooped up her glass. She looked good, but she still had to pay for her drinks. At least she could throw this on the Illusive Man’s tab. “It’s…complicated,” she replied, grinning at the bartender. “Thanks for this.” She held her glass to her chest and picked her way through the bar, back toward a dark, shadowed corner beyond any bachelor parties or dancers. A heavy bass thump still pounded through the speakers, a beat slower than her pulse, but it served to muffle outside conversation once she sat down. 

Time to plan what she would say. She stared at her glass, willing some idea — any idea — to form. 

_So, Garrus, I was dead, and I haunted you. What was I, some kind of spiritual advisor?_

_Probably not a good sign if I’m already making terrible puns and I haven’t even had a drink yet._

_…I really hope that’s not a pun I’ve already made._

She snorted a laugh, loud and ugly, that was thankfully lost in the overhead crash of music. It had been years, it seemed, since she felt so loose, so comfortable in her own skin, so — 

_Alive._

And it had been a long time since she’d sat in a bar, in new clothes that felt too light, too silky against her skin, with flat shoes instead of boots, and her hair loose around her face, waiting for a man to join her. 

_This isn’t a date,_ she reminded herself, and twisted her glass on the table. The ice clinked, mellow and cheerful, but her good mood faltered. For all the invasion of personal space she’d been doing — how close they’d been standing, and how many times she’d touched Garrus, like she had a _right_ to do so — she still had no idea exactly what they’d been doing on Omega. It seemed too much to hope that the touches he’d allowed her meant anything at all. 

Shepard hoped, regardless.Garrus protected his personal space almost as carefully as she did; perhaps he was more willing to touch, but no one crossed his boundaries without an explicit invitation. And he hadn’t refused her touch, even when the frost between them and within her stretched out unending in every direction.

Yes, she hoped. Being dead had to have some advantages; something in those two years had been worth preserving, even if it was nothing more than a handful of embers. She didn’t need any lost memory to tell her that, just the thought of Garrus’ face when his helmet came off in his echoing base. 

_I thought you were dead_ had another side, unspoken even now: _you were here, and you left._

She saw Garrus a few seconds before Garrus saw her. He’d left his armor behind, exchanged it for the ugliest set of civvies she’d ever seen, too many greens and yellows when what he really needed were blues and silvers. 

_My colors_. She flushed and folded the thought away, out of reach, and let her gaze climb from Garrus’ legs to his face, slowly, hungrily. Without his armor, he looked — not just smaller, but more open, Shepard decided, even with the bandage cradling his neck and face. Some of the meticulous construction had left his posture; if Garrus’ body was a fortress, then there weren’t quite so many weapons crowding the ramparts. 

Still the moat to deal with. 

Shepard held up a hand, fighting a losing battle with a foolish, trembling grin. He caught the small motion as he sought her out, and then he drew himself up, neck and head high. When his gaze met hers, she dropped her hand to the table to clutch for her glass.

_Dammit, Garrus_ , she thought, breathless in an instant. She wasn’t ready, not at all. _Give me a chance to say_ something _before you start looking at me like that. Like I’m about to disappear on you._

She winced as soon as he thought it, and finally tasted her whiskey. Once the first hint of smoke and peat washed down her throat, she chanced another look at him, and found his eyes still fixed on her face. Searching out old scars again? Or still not quite ready to believe? 

With an effort, and another sip of whiskey, she made herself focus on the particulars: the loose way he held his hands, how his tunic fell smoothly past his hips, with no gun to break the cut of his clothing — though she’d have bet any backpay the Alliance owed her on him carrying at least one collapsible pistol, somewhere. Just like her. 

Not that Garrus needed a gun to be deadly, she mused, following his slow progress toward her. With one, he could be as subtle as a night breeze or as brazen as a thunderstorm, and any stop in between, but she’d watched him take down a krogan with nothing more than a knife smaller than her hand. She blinked, trying to draw the gauzy memory into focus. Omega, or somewhere along the way to Saren? The thrust deep into the krogan’s chest, the way Garrus’ wrist had twisted as he dragged the blade down --

_I don’t think that particular memory has any place here, no matter when it happened,_ she decided, and banished it. Garrus had reached the table. 

He hesitated for a breath, edging toward a chair on the other side of the table before he slid into the seat next to her, still two careful hand-lengths’ away. 

With more relief than she liked to admit, Shepard blew out a sigh that she tried to hide against the rim of her glass. She had no idea how to begin, even with Garrus at her side. If he’d put himself on the other side of the table — 

“So.” She spun her glass with a flick of her fingers. Garrus’ hands were empty, covered with thin gloves, resting lightly on the table. “Not drinking tonight?” 

“Alcohol seemed like a bad idea,” he said, spreading his hands wide and palm-down. “I want to keep a clear head for this.” 

Shepard smiled at her whiskey, rueful. “A clear head. Right.” She took another sip. The burn faded to a mellow glow before the whiskey hit her stomach. “Good point, but I’ve got a feeling my implants’ll wash this out of my system before I feel anything, good or bad.” She pushed the glass away, still half-full. “Too bad. Expensive stuff, to go to waste like that.” 

Garrus huffed a laugh that barely stirred the air between them. He kept darting glances at her, the same incredulous set to his features that she’d seen on Omega, immediate enough to carve her open, to split her bones. She should have torn out the pain and made him face it with her, instead of alone in the battery, instead of holding herself at a distance,  an animal licking its wounds deep in cover. 

Maybe not completely alone, if her suspicions about Nor were right. The idea didn’t comfort her as much as she hoped

Garrus shifted, his eyes drifting from her face to her neck and shoulders. Shepard held still and let his gaze travel over her, keeping her own on his face. When his gaze reached her hands and lingered there, she took pity on him, and reached out to cover his with her own. 

“Nice suit,” she said, letting herself smile, the lightest hint of a tease in her voice. 

Garrus glared at her, but the way his face relaxed told her she’d taken the right approach. “You’re not even trying to sound convincing, Shepard,” he fired back in a low voice. Shepard shivered as he turned his hand in hers. “It’s a horrible suit, don’t think I don’t know it.” He waved at himself with his free hand. “Hard to afford anything better on a vigilante’s salary.” His voice carried no hint of self-loathing, just a slight thrum of what Shepard thought might be deprecation, lined with grief.

“Good thing we’ve got the Illusive Man to foot the bill now.” Garrus cut a glance at her whiskey, then gave her a slight, flickering smile. 

She grinned back. “Exactly. Might as well enjoy the perks of being in bed with the devil. Especially since the devil…” Her words turned into a sigh, as her mind flashed back to waking up, surrounded on all sides by the steady approach of the flames. She tried to shake it off, but only managed to shudder. Cerberus — _and Liara, don’t forget Liara’s part in all this —_ had dragged her back to life, given her _ship_ back to her, along with another impossible mission, and all they wanted in return was…what? 

There was always a price, and she hadn’t begun to pay it. Shepard closed her eyes. 

“Shepard?” 

She squeezed his fingers. “You know I’m not happy about Cerberus,” she said. “Even after Horizon, it feels like a betrayal of everything we worked for. And now, knowing what I do? What happened while I was _dead?_ God, it’ll drive me crazy.” A bleak laugh broke out of her. 

“Shepard,” said Garrus, his hand echoing hers, squeezing, anchoring. “Shepard, what do you know?” 

She opened her eyes and gave him a bitter, twisting smile. “ _Know_ is a funny word, Garrus.” She glanced longingly at her whiskey, then pulled her eyes back to their joined hands. “It’s been like I’ve had this hole, this well in my head since I woke up, and every so often, something would get tossed out. Images, smells, voices.” With the pad of her thumb, she traced the curve between his fingers. “At first, it was the _Normandy._ Screaming at Liara and Kaidan to move, trying to get Joker out in time. Then — falling. And fire. A lot of fire.” 

Garrus inched closer, and Shepard let herself smile as faint warmth bloomed inside her ribcage. “That made sense, as much as anything did. I figured, of course I’d remember dying. Not really something you forget.” She bit the inside of her lip, and used the spark of pain to keep going. Here, if anywhere, is where they would falter. “After that, there’s a lot of blank space. I don’t know if there’s anything in there, but then I opened my eyes and I was —“ 

He watched her, breathing slow and shallow, and she plunged forward, on the strength of their shared gaze. 

“Your apartment, on the Citadel. I was standing in the hallway, and I heard someone in a room, so I — I blinked and there I was, watching them sleep. Watching _you_ sleep, Garrus.” She swallowed, the remembered anger crawling up her throat, oil-slick, and couldn’t stop her voice from turning dark and bitter. She had _died. “_ So, because I didn’t really have anything better to do, I kept watching you. You woke up, and the way you looked at me — you had no idea. The news hadn’t hit yet.” 

Her pulse thundered through her wrists and neck, until the rush of her blood was the only thing she heard. Shepard sucked in a deep breath and willed herself to relax. “And I told you that you were about to get some bad news, and I was sorry — God, Garrus, help me out here, I feel like I’m just picking at stitches.” 

Garrus made a low, ragged sound deep in his chest. “I thought I was dreaming,” he said. “Last I knew, you were in the Terminus, hunting geth, but one day I woke up with you watching me.” His hand tightened on hers, before he drew away. Shepard watched him clench his fists, and the ache burrowed into her throat. “Dreaming?” he said, and laughed, thick with something wracked and bitter. “I thought I had lost my mind. Then the messages hit, and you were gone.” 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. 

He pressed his fists to the table. “That’s what you said then,” he said. “You were sorry for _dying._ ” 

Shepard kept her silence. Every nerve felt stretched thread-thin, and she wanted to reach out to Garrus, but the brittle, careful set to his shoulders had returned. Somehow, seeing it without his armor between them made it sting even more. 

“I was sorry.” Garrus blinked at her, but she kept talking before he could reply. “I wasn’t leaving any of you in a good place,” she said, on a flash of memory: Kaidan in a dive bar, as out of place as a clean plate in a sink full of dirty dishes; Liara crying without sound; Wrex cleaning his shotgun, every movement jerky and awkward. “But everyone else — they kept going. They got up every day, and they tried.” The memories clarified, their edges knife-sharp, as she spoke. Shepard inhaled and let the words shape themselves, the memories tumbling into the rest of her mind. “But you — you didn’t even try.” She tried to cushion the words, but Garrus jerked away, curling in on himself. “You went to Omega, like it was some kind of punishment, and you ran yourself into the ground. It took me so long to find you, and even then I barely made it. The Blood Pack.” 

“The Blood Pack,” Garrus said, tonelessly. His fists opened, and Shepard grabbed his hands before he could pull them away. 

“Yes,” she said, Omega swimming up in front of her eyes. “I took you to the base, and you were _furious_ with me, Garrus.” 

“Are you that surprised?” he snapped. “You were the great _Commander Shepard_ , and you _died._ Then you show up on Omega?” He cursed, too softly for her translator to pick up, but he didn’t try to untangle his hands from hers. Shepard tightened her grip, just in case, the muscles in her back contracting at his brittle anger. Before she could ask, _why, dear God, why was it so wrong,_ Garrus kept going. 

 “All I could think was, why me? Why not Liara, or Kaidan? Why was I the one that had to go crazy and see you, when you were gone?” 

“But you weren’t crazy,” said Shepard. “It _was_ me. Just…a ghost.” She laughed. “God, that sounds so ridiculous out loud.”

“Try living it,” said Garrus, his voice dulled, as blunt as the end of a rifle, but when Shepard looked up, her eyebrow raised, his mandibles twitched. 

“Very funny, Garrus,” she said, the corners of her mouth quirking. He didn’t reply, but she felt the wired tension leave his fingers, and the tip of his finger traced the fine bones in her wrist. She breathed in, the rill of pleasure at his touch slipping through her. “So then what? Did we —“ 

“You said you remember pieces,” he interrupted, his finger tracing her wrist one last time before going still. “Anything in particular?” 

Shepard swallowed her disappointment and nodded. “Going up against Eclipse,” she said. “I got a lot of it today, during the fight. No idea what triggered it, but I heard the squad. And I was so angry with _you_ , because you didn’t pull out when you had the chance.” The anger rose in her, seething, as corrosive as acid, and faded. “Then you got shot, and I went after the YMIR.” She waited for another burst of memory. Nothing came except a chill, ancient and hungry, gnawing at her. “After that, it’s a blank,” she hedged.

Garrus hummed, and turned her hand over in his. A dozen questions crowded into her mouth, and bright impatience shot up her spine. _My turn for a question_ , she thought, and tugged her hand away. 

“How long?” she asked. When he hesitated, she tugged his hands, pulling his gaze back to her. “Garrus, tell me.” 

“A while,” he said, and damn him, somehow he managed to meet her gaze when he said it. At her eyeroll, he smiled. “Long enough to save my life. A few times.” 

_Blue blood on her hands, and Garrus’ vacant distant laughter — she had to work faster, but every movement exhausted her, like shreds of other lives, other breaths hung on to each object as it passed through her hands. One more pass with the medi-gel, a bandage._

_“Dammit, Garrus.”_

“Garm,” she blurted out. “The fight with Garm.” 

Garrus exhaled, and nodded. “The fight with Garm,” he agreed. “You were furious,” he added, with another swift smile. 

“Damn right I was, you were an idiot.” The anger nearly choked her, so immediate that she had to hold herself back from shouting in his face. “You risked the squad, your own ass, everything you’d worked for, just because you couldn’t be patient and plan — what the hell are you laughing about, Garrus?” 

He shook his head, and reached out for her hand again. Shepard let him take it reluctantly, glaring until he shrugged. 

“It’s just strange to hear you say this now — it’s almost exactly what you said before, on Omega.” Garrus sighed, his thumb tracing mindless circles on her palm. “I don’t know what to think,” he said. “I didn’t have a chance to get used to you being dead before you came, and now I’m just getting used to you being alive again.” 

“If it helps,” she said, with the last dregs of anger still washing through her, “I don’t plan on dying again.” She flung the words at him, sharp as chips of obsidian, and only his wince stopped her before she could keep going. “Sorry, God. I have no idea what I’m doing, Garrus.” She rubbed her eyes with her free hand. “It’s messing with my head, like I’ve got two lives and they’re both fighting for real estate.” 

He chafed her hand between both of his, and Shepard wished, with a vicious hunger, that he’d taken his gloves off. It didn’t seem fair, that her hands were bare and his weren’t. 

_Not how we did things before,_ she thought. 

“You’ll figure it out,” he said. “If anyone can handle two lives, it’s you.”

Shepard sighed. “Thanks for the confidence, but what happened to you having my six?” She tilted her head, and gave him a wistful smile. “You’re going to make me remember everything myself, aren’t you?” 

Garrus paused, and looked down to their hands. “There are things you should remember on your own,” he said, and a vast depth of longing opened in his subvocals, enough to send a hot flush through Shepard. “I want — if you do remember them, I want it to be real.” 

_Oh, my God._ Shepard nodded, the wild, ineradicable hope straining up through her chest. “So there was —“

“Shepard, I know you,” he said, and his smile shivered through her, like the distant vibration of a bell. “And if I let you keep talking, you’ll get it out of me somehow.” He pulled one hand from hers, and brushed the edge of her mouth with his thumb. “Besides.” He leaned in, inches away from her face, and Shepard couldn’t pull her eyes away from his mouth. “You’ll be much more entertained this way.” 

_Damn him._ Shepard gave herself a mental shake and dragged her gaze up to his. If he wanted to tease, then she’d make him pay for every memory later. 

“You really do know me,” she said, her voice tight and rough. 

_Finally. I’m not crazy. All I have to do is remember._


	35. Chapter 35

_— sleeping, they all sleep, like petals, like gardens, deep in winter, oh the cold of winter no, do not be the winter, be the quiet of the halls as they sleep, be their deep breaths, be the lungs that flux and bellow, watch them, sing the last fair light of their day as they rest, they are of not in —_

_***_

Walking back to the _Normandy_ , the taste of whiskey still on her tongue, Shepard saw little visible difference between Nos Astra in the day and Nos Astra at night. The crowds swarmed thick around her, intent on business, under a sky stained violet by the lights of thousands of skycars. 

The air had cooled, but the scent of flowers remained. Somewhere, somehow, some enterprising human emigree had bred peonies, and the heavy-headed flowers nodded alongside the more demure asari breeds. She stroked a petal as she passed, the texture waxy under her fingers, and the scent clung to her hand as she walked.  

They threaded their way single-file through a narrow corridor, where the crush of bodies frayed Shepard’s patience to pieces. One Charge — one tiny Charge — and she’d be free of all of them. 

Before the temptation had a chance to sink in, Garrus turned around, browplates raised. Shepard rolled her eyes, sighing as he flicked her an all-too-knowing smile and faced forward again. She grit her teeth and pushed on in Garrus’ wake, her frustration at the crowd washed away by the ease, the familiarity in his smile. For more of that, she’d handle the salarian who stepped on her foot — twice — and the asari who stopped in front of her to gape, wide-eyed, at her face.  

She pushed out of the crowd, her patience and peaceful good mood almost gone, and found Garrus waiting for her, shoulders high and stiff. He made a small gesture with one hand, but he let the motion fade away into stillness as she took a step into his space. Instead of taking a step back, he gave her a wry grin, and held out his arm.  

The thought of walking arm-in-arm felt chilly and distant compared to how they’d invaded each other’s space in the bar. She knew the gesture was the most he could offer her, without closing off his retreat. Neither of them had taken off all their armor, but she wasn’t going to refuse the chance for a little more contact, not when her whole body felt light and hollow with hunger for it. 

_For him. Don’t sugarcoat it._

Shepard grinned, a flush rising in her cheeks — one she couldn’t blame on alcohol or the humidity — and looped her arm through his. His hide warmed her, even through his suit, even though she hadn’t felt a chill since he sat down beside her in the bar. A cool wind blew down between buildings, forming eddies in corners and tossing the hem of her dress around her knees.  

“Are you warm enough?” Garrus asked. Ever since they left Eternity, he hadn’t spoken. The confidence in the way he handled her —   _You’ll be much more entertained this way —_ had evaporated, and left him almost diffident. “You’re not really dressed —“ He cut himself off and cleared his throat. “Nevermind.”  

“Not really dressed for what? I didn’t know there was a dress code for the conversation we just had.” She tossed her hair back and smiled at him. “And yes, I’m warm enough.” 

“Ah, good,” he said, not looking at her. “Listen, Shepard — what we just talked about.” His steps slowed, and Shepard matched her pace to his. “I’m not trying to be…coy. There are things I — you — we did, and _Spirits_ , why does this have to be so difficult?” He scratched his head. “I guess I hoped things would be easier if you remembered. Not that I had much hope of that, but you kept doing things. The humming. And I just wanted…” 

“Everything to fall into place?” Shepard squeezed his arm, pierced by his frustration, and he leaned into her, briefly. “People like us, we don’t get easy, Garrus.” He sighed, nodding, and she squeezed his arm again. “But…it’s not so bad, is it?” She watched her feet, trusting him to guide her. “We’re not crazy. It happened. Why, how, we’ll figure it out.”

“Optimism, from Commander Shepard?” When Shepard looked up, Garrus grinned at her. “I never thought I’d hear that.” 

She shrugged, letting a grin of her own take over. “It’s a night for impossible things, I guess. Besides, you’re the one making it difficult now.” 

“I have my reasons,” he said, his tone wavering, indecisive; if she pushed him now, he’d give up an answer, maybe more than one. 

She didn’t push. 

“You do,” she replied, easy and cool. “They’re good ones. I don’t want to push this — well, I _do_ , but there are other concerns.” 

Garrus hummed. “Like the Collectors.” 

“Like the Collectors,” Shepard agreed. “God, we’re almost back at the _Normandy_.” 

“Leave’s over, I take it.” Garrus stopped, his face tight. “I don’t think we should —“ He waved at their linked arms. 

Shepard sighed. “Good point.” She untangled her arm from his, reluctance making her hand linger on his elbow. “So,” she said, when they were standing a respectful, professional distance apart, “back to work.” 

Garrus hesitated, on the point on speaking, but shut his mouth and brushed his thumb against the corner of her mouth instead. 

 _Best good-night kiss I’ve had in years,_ Shepard mused, as his touch sparked against her skin, and a not-quite memory of his forehead brushing hers rose and receded. 

“You go first,” he said. “I’ve got your six.” 

Shepard laughed, shaking her head. Before she did more than turn on her heel, eyes on the _Normandy_ , her omni-tool chimed, the sound a knife-point splitting the night apart. _Leave is definitely over,_ Shepard thought, and flicked open her display. She felt _Commander Shepard_ settle over her face, a mask made of duty and acceptance. No room for hunger now, nor ardency. Time to work. 

“Miranda?” asked Garrus. 

She hummed absently, scanning the message. “New dossier. Looks like we’ve got another —“ She paused, then burst out laughing. _This night just keeps getting better and better_ , she thought, her grin turning hot, fierce as a sunrise. 

Garrus shifted to peer down at her face. “Shepard?” 

She closed her display, flashing her grin in the night. “Ever heard of Haestrom, Garrus?” 

***  

_— be a haven for the kind man, for the man who refused to return, warm his hands that shake and his heart that stutters, lay a touch on his eyes, be the hands of his mouth and the song of the bright blue cascade, eat the pain that strains in his skull, guide him back to uncurdled light and the sloped sweet notes of the ship that is still home, home forever, home unending —_

 *** 

One hidden, but infinitely precious, benefit to all Miranda’s modifications was the lack of red eyes, Shepard thought to herself, watching Miranda as her XO shuffled datapads across the desk. If Shepard hadn’t seen the tear tracks on Miranda’s cheeks after the goodbye with Orianna, she’d never have believed Miranda had ever given in to such an obvious display. 

Not that she had any room to criticize _displays_. Shepard smiled down at her hands, thin contrails of hope still burning through her. Miranda undoubtedly knew where Shepard and Garrus had gone during those few hours of leave, and while Shepard didn’t believe Miranda had tried to listen in on the conversation, anyone with eyes would have seen the way she and Garrus —  

Shepard gave herself a second more to smile, then folded the thoughts and her smile away, tucking them into a safe, quiet corner of her mind. The time would come when she could wrap herself in them, and indulge for a few minutes in what felt distinctly like a beginning. Like falling. 

And the half-thawed ribbons unspooling in her head told her she hadn’t fallen alone.  

 _I’m doing a poor job at not indulging,_ she scolded herself, half-hearted. She couldn’t afford a distraction, no matter how pleasurable. Even if the swoop in her gut, for once, wasn’t dread, but a peaceful, easy feeling, like the one her mother used to sing about. 

Any indulgence felt like betrayal; the few hours in Eternity and the close, diffident walk back to the _Normandy_ had broken her focus. She’d taken her eyes off the Collectors, and Nor’s hints, and the greasy, possessive fingerprints all over her ship, courtesy of Cerberus. 

  _I can’t forget the cost. Every time I drop my guard, it gets higher. There’s a price to remembering Omega. We may have each other, but the squad is gone._

She steadied herself against the dry grief, and breathed in through her nose. _I’ll take it all,_ she told herself. _The bitter, the sweet. No half-measures._

One more deep breath, and she dragged her full attention back to Miranda. Her XO plucked a datapad out of the pile and held it out, one eyebrow raised. 

“Joker’s set course for Haestrom,” she said, voice as smooth as her features. “We’ll make the relay in approximately two hours, and be ready to drop on Haestrom six hours after that.” 

“Excellent.” Shepard scanned the datapad. “It’s going to be hairy. Haestrom’s sun fries everything that isn’t triple-shielded or under stone, but if we’re looking at the possibility of a geth incursion, we’ll need to go tech-heavy.” She bit the inside of her lip. “Though heavy firepower won’t be out of place.” 

Miranda’s eyebrow inched higher. “Grunt or Zaeed, then,” she said, her tone making it quite clear which she preferred. “Unless you’d rather stack heavy on the firepower side, and use that to punch through whatever resistance we run into.” 

Shepard shook her head and flicked off the datapad. She finally had the XO she wanted — no, the XO she _needed_ — in Miranda, and she hated to shoot down Miranda’s suggestion so quickly. “It’s a good idea, but I can guarantee we’ll need a more balanced squad. Overload’ll be worth the extra maintenance on our tech.” She leaned back and crossed her legs, pleased when Miranda nodded without a trace of frustration. 

“I’d like to accompany you,” she said, and now it was Shepard’s turn to raise an eyebrow as Miranda went on. “I’ve never faced geth, except in simulated combat, and while that was — invigorating — I’d like to take advantage of the chance to gain firsthand knowledge.” 

Which would leave Jacob in command of the _Normandy_ in their absence. Shepard’s earlier impressions of him had been confirmed: efficient, with a good barometer for the emotional weather aboard the ship. With the squad so well-stacked toward the biotic end of the spectrum, she hadn’t had much reason to take him on missions, but Jacob had never voiced a complaint. He wasn’t Pressly, but few would ever be able to match Pressly. 

A burst of nostalgia for Pressly, shaded with mellow, aching grief, surprised her. Fussy, rigid Pressly, who hated having krogan and quarians and God forbid _turians_ on the _Normandy_ — who had died when the bulkhead collapsed as he shoved Tali and Ensign Cipes toward a lifepod. 

 _Rest in peace, my friend,_ she thought, smiling sadly at the blank datapad. _You are missed._

“We’ll take Grunt, with Zaeed and Mordin on standby if we need backup.” Shepard frowned. “I’ll want Samara on standby too. With luck, we’ll avoid needing a second shuttle drop, but you know how well luck holds when you start relying on it.” 

Miranda surprised Shepard — and herself, from the expression on her face — with a very unladylike snort. “Indeed. Are we running a three-person squad for this mission?” 

Shepard shook her head. “Garrus will be our fourth. He’s got as much experience as I do, and I doubt he’d want to miss all the fun.” 

“Understood, Shepard.” Miranda made a note on a datapad, then hesitated. “About my sister…” 

“Miranda, you’re part of my crew,” she said. “This mission won’t work without you. And I understand about family. Something like that happens, you shouldn’t have to deal with it alone.”

Miranda nodded, a sliver of warmth in her steady gaze and a new softness to her mouth. “In any case, Oriana is safe, and we have you to thank for it.” She stood, and held out her hand. “So thank you, Shepard.” 

Fighting a smile, Shepard rose and shook Miranda’s hand. “Any time.” As she released Miranda’s hand, she allowed herself a moment of curiosity; some of Miranda’s frigid distance had melted, and if they were going to bond and work as a Commander and XO should, she needed to take advantage of it. “Will you stay in touch?” 

Miranda’s smile softened. “I don’t know,” she said, with a little shrug. “I would _like_ to, but I’ll save that for after our mission.” 

Shepard smiled back, even as a thin chill slipped through her. Miranda hadn’t said _if_ _,_ but she didn’t need to.  

*** 

 _— and now the king, king of stone, king of fire, king of blood, king of the dead, his voice is their voice as they cry out to break the egg, he would be father brother son, families built on old bones, on dead ground, he will make the green grow if it breaks him, he is the new soil and the lives to come are the roots that will knit his new world together —_  

*** 

 _I’m so tired of dead worlds_ , Shepard thought, and rolled her shoulders against a greasy twist of nerves. Her armor — new to the point of stiffness, unfamiliar and bulky — resisted her movement, but gave against the greater push from her muscles. She turned away from the viewscreen and faced her squad.  

“All right, we’ve got three seconds, max, before the sun fries our shields, so stick to shade as much as you can. We can expect a sizeable geth presence, according to preliminary scans, but no precise enemy numbers or what kind of units we’ll be facing. Could be anything waiting down there, up to a Colossus. So don’t play loose with your omni-tools, you’re going to need them.” 

Miranda shook her head as she pinned her hair back and adjusted her visor. Shepard knew all too well her XO had a _practice what you preach, Shepard_ sitting on the back of her tongue, but Miranda kept her peace. 

 _For now,_ Shepard thought. _She’s only quiet because I agreed to the heavier armor._

“Never thought I’d miss the Mako,” Garrus mused out loud as he checked his rifle. “Too bad you can’t just run them over, then hit them with the grenade launcher while they’re still struggling to get up, Shepard.” 

She sent him a sour look — that tactic, however _inelegant_ , had saved their asses too many times to count — but spoiled the effect by smiling back when he looked up and grinned at her. To hide it, she looked away, throwing a glance at Grunt, who looked heartbroken an opportunity for wholesale destruction wasn’t available. 

“The Mako wouldn’t do us much good in these ruins, Garrus,” she said, when her face was under her control again. “It handled like a drunk rhino on flat ground. I’d hate to drive it here.” Her omni-tool beeped the two-minute warning. “All right, landing positions. Whatever’s waiting for us down there, we’re going in hot.” 

“Literally,” said Miranda, and smiled innocently when Shepard blinked at her.  

***  

— _and then follow the one who hides her wings, wings black with soot and black with guilt, the rich clothes do not fit her quite so well as the dust of a dig site, this room is not her home, this room is her cage, gilded and bright and oh so bitter, she takes no joy in the knowledge that passes through her hands, her wings in knots at her back, and her eyes sweet eyes oh sweet daughter her eyes are filled with tears —_

***   

Grunt roared over the comms as the Colossus finally went down, in a flood of dying electrical wires and sparks that hissed as they collided with Shepard’s barriers. She waited till the last geth shriek faded into the dry air, then jogged up the ramp, her omni-tool whining in the heat as it scanned ahead and around her. 

“That’s why I like you, Shepard!” Grunt yelled. Shepard imagined him pumping one fist in the air, flush with victory, and grinned, forcing the hard set of her mouth to relax. “Big things!” he added, then laughed, low and dirty. 

She wondered, briefly, how Grunt would have reacted to Sovereign, and her grin stretched her lips till they hurt. _He’d probably have charged the bastard himself_. “Don’t get too excited, Grunt,” she said into her comms. “Looks like we’re all out of geth, but head back to the shuttle. I need you to make sure we’re clear if we have to bug out. No surprises.” As Grunt grumbled an assent, she turned her attention to Garrus and Miranda. “We’re clear down here. I’m not picking up any more energy signatures. Miranda, any sign of Kal’Reegar?”  

“None, Shepard.” A beat went by on Miranda’s end. “He may have found somewhere to lay low until the geth were taken care of, but he’s not responding to my hails.” 

Shepard bit her lip. Reegar had seemed like he could — in the words of her old instructor at the villa — chew up nails and spit out carpet tacks.; he’d been confident about his suit keeping him alive, but without shields, his chances dropped. Badly. “All right. Make your way back to the shuttle, but hold at a hundred meters out and keep trying to raise Reegar. We’re not leaving him behind. Garrus, meet me at the observatory entry. I still can’t get Tali on the comms, so it looks like we’ll have to hack our way in.” 

“Copy that, Shepard, I’m on it.” 

After Garrus signed off, Shepard took a moment to stretch out her legs, wincing when the armor pinched the crease of her thigh. She made a mental note to run a workout in full gear when they got back to the _Normandy_ , and checked her Carnifex one last time, thankful she’d decided to stick with lighter firepower for once. The thought of lugging around her shotgun made a fresh wave of sweat break out on along her hairline.  

A breeze, faint but insistent, filtered through the ruins. Shepard lifted her head to it, closing her eyes for a moment’s relief. 

***  

— _a kiss for the sisters for the mother for the father cupped hands around the family now dead space nothing here no voice no eyes see nothing left gone all gone one scream is all that is left grief and rage and pain no surrender she held till the end one scream one mouth she held she held she held she_

 _held here_  

_quiet_

_now_

 

_always —_

*** 

Even with eyes trained to see detail in dust motes, Shepard couldn’t see anything worth excavating, not even something to blame for the steady beat of unease in her gut, a beat that made her mouth feel grainy and her eyes heavy.  The dig site was full of stone, nothing more: grey stone, sun-blasted and worn smooth by centuries of use. Heat shimmers flickered along the edges of shadows, their hissing muffled by the weak breeze. 

At the center of the dig site, a circle of tall, blunted stones circled around a shallow bowl, too close together to work as a sun-dial, or to let someone slip through in the space between them. The bowl stood no more than twenty feet across at its widest point, and at its highest would barely reach Shepard’s knee. A religious site, or some kind of memorial? 

Shepard tapped her visor’s zoom and leaned out, straining to peer between the pillars. _Quarian Stonehenge?_ _What were you looking for, Tali?_ she thought, checking her comms. No answer from Tali. She bit her lip. The last time they’d heard from Tali, they managed to get a few yelled words through before the geth jammed the comms, and buried the transmitters on Tali’s end in a few tons of rubble. Tali was still safe inside the observatory, sealed behind a set of redundant doors — the ancient quarians hadn’t scrimped on security — but the thought didn’t reassure Shepard. 

 _Seriously, Tali._ She swiped a hand over her forehead. Sweat trickled between her breasts and down her spine, leaving her sticky and itchy. _What could be worth this goddamn heat?_ Only Therum had been this miserable, but there, they hadn’t had to deal with the sun.  

 _Fucking sun_ , she thought sourly, as she jumped through a patch of blistering light. Her sunscreen had long melted off, and the telltale aching stretch of a sunburn had started on her nose and cheeks. _Give me a starless winter night - well, maybe not_ winter _, just anything but this heat. Garrus probably loves it. He bitched about Therum, but he was the only one who didn’t look like he was about to keel over with heatstroke by the time we got out._

Thinking of Garrus gave her a welcome respite from the heat. His arm linked with hers, his thumb warm and sweet against the corner of her mouth, _his_ mouth --

She pushed the thoughts away, ignoring the way her body pulsed and glowed under her armor at the thought of _mouths_ , and leapt over a crumbled patch of stone. Another bead of sweat slipped down between her breasts, and the need to swear sat heavy on her tongue till she swallowed it. Focus. She needed to focus. Get Tali, find Reegar — 

The needle in her spine flared before she knew she’d even heard the sound. Shepard dropped to a crouch behind a pile of rock and pulled a Shockwave down into her hands, the cool blue wave sweeping through her in a rush. The first burst of adrenalin kicked into her bloodstream, and she held her breath. 

The sound came again. Someone choking on air, a clotted, brittle clutch and release. Shepard placed it in half a second. _Eleven o’ clock, thirty feet out._ She checked her omni-tool, already knowing her squad was out of range. Besides, none of them could make that sound, the thin, old-glass prick in her ears. 

She slid her thumb over the barrel of her pistol, finger loose on the trigger, then licked her lips and called out a single word. 

Before they left Reegar to take on the Colossus, she’d shouted the mission’s passwords into his comms, a simple call-and-answer. Two random words, different for every mission. If the squad got separated, or the comms went down, they could still identify friendlies. 

“Bulldog,” she said. She’d feel like an idiot if it was nothing more than rockfalls echoing strangely through the stone, but better to be an idiot than to get a new hole in the head. 

The sound came again, grinding closer. Twenty feet out, and closing.  

Shepard checked the thermal clip again. “Bulldog,” she hissed. The needle burrowed inward, hot and singing. 

Ten feet.  

“ _Bulldog_.” The Shockwave quivered and shoved at the skin of her palms. 

Five feet. 

“Bull-“ 

*** 

_The medics who pull her out of the Mako can’t believe she’s still alive. They pump her full of medi-gel, then start talking over her like she isn’t there. Like they don’t expect her to live._

_Shepard doesn’t expect to either. The last of her adrenalin is gone; without it, she’s driftwood, dry and airless. Not blameless — no, never that, she couldn’t even save one, and now she can’t even save herself._

_All her rules, all her planning, burned to ash. Every lesson her mother gave her on strength, on hope — none of it helped._  

_She’s falling._

_The last rational part of her brain that hasn’t been shredded notes when the medi-gel hits her bloodstream. It can tell when the pain recedes, but her nerves can’t stop screaming their agonized signals, howl upon howl upon howl until her pulse drowns in the flood._

_Her heartbeat stops._

Oh, thank God _, she thinks, before the horror strikes her. Then:_ no, not like this. I belong in space. Not now. 

_“She’s coding!”_

_Shepard tries to squeeze her eyes shut against the voices and the hot light pouring hungrily over her skin, but nothing obeys. Her lungs refuse to inflate and she sinks, a stone into water. At least it’s quiet as she falls, and the silence eats up the pain, starting at the edges and working its way in with greedy bites._  

 _Good. She wants it to be quiet. She wants to be far away from the voices of her squad, from the_ smell _of her own body burning. So tired, so goddamn tired. Let there be quiet. If she can just have some quiet —_

 _“Clear!”_  

_No. No. Don’t. Pl —_

_Shepard screams._

_***_  

“Shepard, _chesty_.” 

She spun out of cover, adrenalin blowing her veins wide and shaky. Her back stung, like nettles, like poison.  

 _Haestrom. I’m on Haestrom. No one was left to talk on Akuze._ She blinked to focus, and let the heat and sun pour over her. Wrong, all wrong. Too much sun. She tried to lick her lips and grimaced at the taste of her own sweat. Wrong. They had to leave, had to go, _now._

Someone stepped from indigo shadows to blue, and Shepard raised her pistol, aiming right for — 

Garrus, with his rifle raised, his hand resting lightly near the trigger. Tension radiated out of him, even through his armor, in the way his mandibles were drawn tight to his face, how he held his neck stiff and too straight. 

“What was that, Shepard? You didn’t answer, you just kept yelling that word.” His mandibles twitched once. “Are you all right?

Shepard blew out a breath and lowered her pistol. She ran the tip of her tongue over her dry lips, willing her hands not to shake, or her gaze to waver. Hiding from Garrus so soon after they’d gained any ground galled her, but she couldn’t sacrifice the mission to the nightmare of her memories. She couldn’t sacrifice _Tali._ “Had a bad moment. I’ll…explain later,” she said, knowing she’d just damned herself to explaining Akuze as well. 

Garrus studied her, some of the old wariness shifting in his gaze, before he sighed and dropped his shoulders. “Later,” he said, with all the force of a promise. 

*** 

 — _and now the hearts are ocean-full, now the lungs awake, and now the blood leaps, and now there is memory, and where there is memory there is hope, now the thread of their nights is spun from silk to steel, now their mouths and their eyes are open, now they are_ them _and the work can begin —_

*** 

In Garrus’ expert hands, the hack took two minutes, two minutes Shepard spent pacing and gnawing the inside of her lip, ready to empty her pistol in the sound’s direction the moment the needle sparked a warning.  

“Must have been a hell of a bad moment to throw you like this, Shepard,” Garrus drawled without looking up from his omni-tool.  

She breathed in slowly through her nose, and let the air out in a soft exhale. “It was,” she said. _Breathe it out._ “How’s that hack coming?” 

Garrus hummed, his lower subvocal hitting a discordant note before sliding back into harmony again. “It’s taking longer than I’d like, but the ancient quarians were just as crazy about security redundancies as they are today. Two more levels, and we’re in. Thirty more seconds.”  

“Good. Then we’re —“  

Their comms crackled with a flare of static, the voice underneath almost lost in the noise.  

“— _pard? Are you —“_  

Shepard was too well-trained to flinch at the noise — _would_ have been, under normal circumstances — but her fist tightened around her pistol grip anyways, and she had to force her fingers to relax. Garrus jolted, his hand missing a beat on his omni-tool, but he recovered fast. Faster than Shepard did; she had to hold her breath before her heartbeat slowed. But he hadn’t heard the noise — he hadn’t had it drag open the worst of the rot and pollution in his head.  

She hoped he hadn’t. There was only one place Garrus could have gone.  

The static faded seconds later, and Shepard opened the channel. “Tali? That you?”  

“ _— you? Are you there, Shepard? Please, answer me.”_ Tali’s voice floated dreamily out of the comms.

Shepard sank her teeth into her lip when the prickle of unease rolled over in her gut, and barely noticed the tang of blood when the skin broke. Tali sounded _wrong,_ too calm for someone locked in a room with an army of geth trying to break their way in. 

_Calm? She practically sounds drugged._

“Tali, I’m here, Garrus is hacking his way in — can you get the door open from your side?” She heard the way she shouted, and how her voice ricocheted off the stone, each echo clear and precise. “Tali, do you copy?”  

 _“I copy, Shepard. I’m trying to boost the signal, stupid transmitter’s too old and degraded to —“_ The static cut off Tali’s voice in a new, harsh buzz. 

Shepard swore. “Don’t worry about the transmitter, Tali, we’re coming. See if you can get the door open.” All thoughts of uncomfortable armor and heat were pushed out of her head as she turned back toward Garrus and the doors shuddered partially open. “All right, Garrus, let’s --“ She hissed through her teeth as the needle flared and stung, an instant before the sound rushed up to her ears. _Through_  her comms. 

Crouched by the door, Garrus cringed, the breath punched out of him, and half-turned clumsily to look at her. “Shepard, what the hell is that?” The second subvocal disappeared, melted away into a slur that sounded all the worse coming in Garrus’ voice. “What — damn, I —“ He shook his head 

“Don’t listen!” she yelled, her head a messy sprawl of two worlds. She fought Akuze’s pull, even as it fought to claim her body, the fire licking sour trails of agony up her back. _Use it,_ she screamed internally, _you know how to use pain, so use this!_  

Garrus gaped at her, eyes wide and blank, his hand waving uselessly over his omni-tool. “I —“ He dropped his head and fell forward, nonsense syllables leaking out of his mouth. “Shepard — go —“ he bit out, the last word fading into a groan. “Go! I'm fine!"  

Stricken, she watched him shove himself up, and snapped her teeth shut on a scream — _I have to move, I have to run —_. On instinct, she reached out for the blue wave in the back of her head. The doors stood open, wide enough for her to pass through, if she’d been wearing her old armor. 

Something shifted in the dark interior on the other side of the door, like ink in water, or distant lightning. The sound cut off with a snapping whine, and she hit the Charge before she could pray that it would work. 

The doors slid through her, the metal edges too sharp at first to be painful, and when she felt it, she didn’t have the breath to scream. Shepard fell out of the Charge, stumbling and breathless, retching as the nerves in her arms shrieked, but the pain had a use: it kept her from falling. She shoved herself up, forced her arm to raise her pistol, and pushed another bolt down into her free arm as her eyes adjusted to the dark. 

Tali had her back to Shepard, muttering to herself, one hand hovering uncertainly over a terminal. Her other hand held a shotgun, but lazily, like Tali had forgotten it was there. Typical Tali: when she confronted a problem, the world around her dropped away in a fit of temporary solipsism. She did her best work when she ignored everything else around her, when sounds and movement faded into a grey, silent backdrop. 

She might not have heard the sound at all.  

“Tali!” Shepard cried out. She knew the pain made her voice shrill, collapsed it into a child’s scream, and anger lanced through her. Nothing had the right to make her sound like that. 

 _Anger is a tool._ She used hers like a hammer, and bludgeoned through the panic biting at her nerves with a wordless yell. The figure turned to glare at her, its hands hooked into claws, and she threw the Pull toward it, aiming her pistol as the energy slammed down her arm. It opened its mouth, impossibly, obscenely wide, into nothing but black space, and vanished back into the shadows before the first echo of her cry faded. Tali made no sign she’d heard Shepard, or realized there was a world outside her terminal. 

Shepard refused to shudder, and called Tali’s name again as she took a step forward, feeling her way carefully along the floor. She stumbled when her foot caught on something slack and heavy, with a sickening give, and the breath caught in her throat when she looked down. 

Two quarian bodies, thin reddish blood coating the inside of their masks, stretched out between her and Tali. 

She reached for her biotics again, groping with numb mental fingers, but the sound jarred her control loose as it slammed into her skull. Her anger scattered, and with it, any hope for defending herself.

 _Call Garrus, he’s right outside_ , whispered the last part of her brain not tangled up in panic. _He might be --_

Her hands wouldn’t move. She couldn’t reach her comms. Garrus was twenty feet away, but the sound was closer, and whatever made it stood between her and the door. 

Tali kept typing. 

The sound crawled toward Shepard, dry as the stone under her feet. A dead sound, forgotten and lost, buried under sand. Two dead quarians, their masks filled with blood. The dead colonist on Horizon, with his grey face and dirt under his nails. 

When hands fastened around her legs, Shepard tried to yell, but her mouth refused to open.

 


	36. Chapter 36

 Shepard expected a headlong fall into nightmare, a fishhook in her belly dragging her down. She had to brace herself against the invading memories before they rose up to drink her blood. An anchor was all she needed, a line to tie her to Haestrom, its sun, and its heat, even the broken stones under her boots. But everything was wrong: her armor too heavy, her gun too small, even her skin was too slick and new to help. She stumbled, crashed to her knees, and the hands on her legs moved to her waist, clutching for purchase. 

The hands on her legs groped higher, toward her thighs and hips. Its fingers were steel-hard even through her armor. The thing was climbing her, like a vine, like a weed. Like ivy choking a tree. Shepard shuddered, the spasm through her muscles only making the thing tighten its grasp around her.  

 _It’s crushing me_ , she thought, as the dark behind her eyelids filled with milky white flashes. _It’s going to happen again, it’s going to make me remember and I — oh God._

Sticky panic rose in her gut and sank under the thing’s weight as it clawed up her back, legs coiling bonelessly around her waist. Dry, slender hands wrapped around her throat, tracing hot lines over her jaw and toward her lips.  

 _No. No!_ She curled inward, around the last bright spark of her mind, and tried to shield it from the greedy fingers scratching at her skin. Shepard saw Hamato’s face, blurred by agony and then by fire, washed away in the acid flood. She felt the blue sky, arching over her head and pressing down on her shoulders. Then Phillips slipped from her arms, boneless, breathless, and dead, dead, dead.  

 _I couldn’t save any of them. Who am I if I can’t fight? What does it mean if I can’t even beat_ this? 

She curled tighter around the tiny spark, the one remaining bastion of self and now, and screamed as the fingers gouged lines into her cheeks. _One of them. One of my crew. Just one._

She could save Tali, because as long as she kept fighting, the thing’s focus was on her and nowhere else. She grit her teeth and twisted, trying to throw herself forward against the weight on her back.

The fingers paused, their control slipped, and Shepard’s hand twitched on reflex. Her nerves recognized the mnemonic when her mind couldn’t, and fed the dark energy into a web around her fingers. The Shockwave sliced out of her, driving itself into the wall with a dull roar, and the impact threw Shepard to the side. She had a moment to think _oh thank God_ and savor the dew-sweet relief of free before a heavy weight slammed into her, pinning her down as a hand covered her mouth.  

“Such a will, you have such a _will_ , it tastes like thunder,” whispered a clotted voice, close to her ear. She felt the flicker of a cold tongue against her neck and howled. The sound broke against the palm covering her mouth. “You taste like thunder and water oh like sweet living water lovely water you are the water, we’ll drink you up, tell us, tell us what you are, what are you that you have such a will?” The tongue flicked again, and then cold teeth scraped at the thin skin under her ear, as a low, miserable grinding sound — a familiar sound, like ground glass against her eyes— working its way out of the thing’s chest. 

When her mouth opened, the thing plunged its fingers down her throat.

*** 

_we’ll eat you up_

***

The problem with making a career of the impossible — surviving when any other body would have locked down and gone silent, refusing to bend for the voice of a monster — was that the impossible became the expected, and every cry for help came with a name attached. Her name. 

Shepard heard the cries calling for her, and shut her eyes.  

***  

_we love you so_

***  

_This isn’t the nightmare she expected. She’s high above the plain, and she can’t do anything but watch as one by one, her squad dies._

_Distance always tells a new story. From here, she can see how hopeless it is. She barely hears their cries and the sharp gunfire. Everything echoes back to her through the younger Shepard, as she tries to gather her squad into something like a unit._  

_Shepard read the reports until she carried them in her heart, lead weights in the valves. She could see the attack from every angle: how there had been two maws, one from the east, one from the south, blocking all paths of escape, and how the last of the squad had made a break for the safety of the mountains._

_It doesn’t prepare her for watching them die, and not even having the chance to try to pull them back together for one last try at defense. They die, and she has to watch, until she’s the only one left, a slim, dark-armored figure alone among the stones._  

 _Pity moves through her in a heavy flood. The other Shepard, is making her way to the Mako, and in her legs, Shepard feels exhaustion poison her muscles. Her own lungs ache for air, and even though her heart keeps beating slow and sure, she can feel it racing, too._  

_She sees the other Shepard run, long legs eating the ground up almost a meter at a time, hands outstretched and grasping for the Mako’s doors. There’s no grace to the other Shepard’s movements as she swings herself inside, no economy of effort. It’s a sprint for a last hope — not for survival, but for a chance at taking out whatever has killed her. The other Shepard thinks she’s a dead woman_

_She knows exactly when the other Shepard gets to the controls, because she feels it in her hands: the tough plastic grip, worn thin by dead men’s hands, the resistance as she blindly aims, and the heavy cough as the grenade launcher fires. She feels it, when the other Shepard collapses, hidden inside the Mako, her body twitching. Each spasm echoes in her body._

_“Why are you showing me this?” Shepard asks no one at all, as the thresher maw writhes, its death-stink thick in the air. The Mako shudders as the maw’s body crashes to the ground, its last burst of acid hissing against the stones.“I know what happened. I lived it.” Her head aches, right over her amp, and her throat is sore._  

 _Fingers in my throat —_  

 _She pushes the memory away, along with the surge in panic that comes with it. Instead, she watches the Mako, sick to her stomach for what comes next._  

_Time is elastic here, at once stretching out and compressing, so Shepard feels every agonized heartbeat, every scorched breath, that the other Shepard takes. Two days. Two days of swimming back to consciousness long enough to scream her throat raw while she tried to fight another medi-gel pack into the dispenser._

_Then the shuttles land and the medics pour out, their voices dull and methodical until they find her, half-dead in the skeleton of the Mako._ _Shepard feels the moth-wing flutter of awareness in the other Shepard’s mind, weak and fading, as the medics start their work. Their voices are clearer now: something_ interesting _has happened._

_They find Toombs not long after, buried under a rockfall, and they flip a coin to see who they’ll save, and who they’ll take for study._

_That’s all it was: heads or tails, as impersonal as turning the page in a magazine, and Toombs loses. They carry him to a shuttle with a blanket draped over his head._

_Whatever they did to him had driven him mad, past the edge of what a human being can tolerate, and after they had squeezed out every last drop from him, they let him go. And years later, Shepard killed him, one shot to the head — and she finally became what the news vids had always called her: the sole survivor._

_Shepard wants to look away, but her body is locked in place as the other Shepard seizes. She feels the other Shepard’s heart stop, for thirty-seven seconds. Then there’s relief, the sensation of weight tumbling from her shoulders. And the other Shepard exhales into the silence, peaceful, because now she can rest. Why had she been fighting to begin with? This is quiet. This is rest. This is —_

_Her scream as they force it to start beating again is furious, a desperate animal cry, unbearable even at this distance. And it doesn’t stop. Shepard feels the weight of the scream on her shoulders, dragging her down toward the Mako, toward pain and fire and the smell of metal mixed with burned flesh. An instant passes when the distance between them is gone, and it’s Shepard’s back that burns, her bones that are ash, and her mouth that screams._

_Rough, gentle fingers cradle the curve of her skull, and Shepard jolts back to herself, the pain flushed out of her muscles. The scream keeps going, but distance insulates her, and she is just a spectator in the memory again._

_“Shepard,” says Nor. “I am sorry.”_

_Shepard resists the urge to press into the comfort of the touch and licks her lips. “It’s like Horizon, isn’t it?” she says, her eyes still on the Mako, the medics’ voices hissing in her ears. “Whatever touched me there — your obscenity — it’s trying to do the same thing here. Getting into my head, showing me the worst day of my life. So why are you here? Come to watch the show?” She waits for Nor to respond, but Nor stays silent, her fingers never pausing in their slow circles. “Why aren’t I down there?” she asks. “I lived it before. What’s different about this time?”_

_“It is all I could do,” Nor answers. “I am too far away to help, but I can soften it. I can…use this.”_

_Shepard smiles, hard and cold. “How many times have I said that in my life? But it doesn’t always work.” She lifts her head, straining against the pull toward the other Shepard. “I couldn’t even save one,” she says, as Shepard’s scream echoing in her throat “Not even Toombs. And if I stop and look back, that’s all I’ll see. Everyone I couldn’t save. Benezia. Toombs. Ash. Give me enough time and I’ll figure out everyone who’s died on my watch. It’s in the thousands. And they still keep asking me to try. Save them, Shepard. You’re the only one who can.”_  

_“You are.” Nor’s voice, gentle as a mother’s, floats toward Shepard from over her shoulder. “This formed you, just like your memories form me. And I remember everything.” Her fingers go still on Shepard’s neck. “You did all you could. When will you believe it? You did what was best.”_

_The other Shepard finally stops screaming, and Shepard feels her gasp in one ragged breath before the sedatives kick in and she shudders into unconsciousness._ I don’t envy you. What comes next makes you wish you’d died. The first thing you say when you wake up is _why_. 

_“Let it go,” says Nor. She strokes the back of Shepard’s head. “It will choke you. Remember the ones you’ve saved.”_

_Down below, the medics pull the other Shepard, limp-bodied, out of the Mako, and ease her onto the last of the shuttles. The care they take with her is at odds with how they treated Toombs. She has to be presentable for the cameras._

_Shepard laughs, the sound as brittle and ice-stricken as her smile.“A weapon doesn’t save anyone. It wins or loses.” Her throat is raw, and her shoulders are still curved under the weight of the other Shepard’s scream. Her scream. “I know I promised to live, but this — maybe I wasn’t supposed to. Maybe I was never supposed to come back.”_

_“Look at me, Shepard.”_

_She closes her eyes, shakes her head. This isn’t a memory; her presence outside the other Shepard’s body proves that, but just because she isn’t reliving this nightmare doesn’t mean that it’s any less poisonous. It doesn’t mean she should trust Nor’s voice and turn around. Shepard remembers Lot’s wife, turned to a pillar of salt, for the crime of looking behind at a burning city. She knows how the story ends: if you turn around, you’re lost. And she still has so much work for to do._

_“Open your eyes, or I will open them for you.”_  

_“No.” Shepard’s stomach swoops as the shuttle breaks through the atmosphere. “You’ve got nothing I want to see.”_

_Nor makes a dark, clotted sound, and her fingers tighten on the back of Shepard’s head. “What you want is irrelevant, Shepard. It is time to let it go.” She pauses._

_In the split-second silence, Shepard tries to turn around, but Nor’s hand tightens again and she’s frozen in place._

_“I am sorry, Shepard,” Nor whispers. Her voice is an echo, blown by a cold wind from a world that was never born. “You will not enjoy this either — but you are out of time.” She twists her wrist, her scream slams into Shepard’s head, and Shepard slips away, down into the quiet well and the inky currents inside it._

_It’s the beacon all over again. Images and sounds and smells, too many for one human mind to process, and Shepard’s bones quiver under the deluge. She smells clean earth and burnt plastic; she hears a child singing and a woman screaming; she sees black rock and a blood-red sunrise. None of it makes sense. She knows better than to snatch at the sensations as they flow through her, but holding herself at a distance is impossible. She is the flood, and that means she’s the child singing, and the earth, and the rock. Her head aches with the strain. There’s only so much she’s built to hold, and her poor mind doesn’t have much space left._

_The rock shows up again and again, flashing between brief glimpses of sand and dark rivers, and despite her own warnings, Shepard tries to focus on it. She sees thick veins of iridescent color, like oil on water, spread over the surface of the rock — colors that make her eyes water, colors that leave the taste of bile in her mouth._  

_A word rises out of the flood, buoyant despite the way it sits heavy on her tongue._

_Sarcophagus._

_Shepard cradles the word close, and begins her slow ascent._

*** 

_— too long she has clawed at her body like rats in the walls, she keeps her body like a gnarled branch, no roots to speak of, but once she had them, once she had roots like hair in the soil, once her roots grew thick and green on the air from his mouth, now they must do so again_

_I_

_I am coming_

_I will break myself open, if not me then who, I am made for this_

_and he shall wake —_

***

Garrus stared down at his hands. In one world, he saw the fine grey sand ground into the joints of his armor, each movement a rasp and slither of tiny particles against metal. And he felt heat — blasted, forsaken heat that left his tongue like a strip of leather in his mouth. From a few feet away, just on the other side of the door, he heard Shepard’s voice call Tali’s name, and his body lurched forward, toward the gap and the darkness behind it. He caught himself before he fell, stomach tipping in a seasick roll, and tried to push himself to his feet. 

Then Omega slammed into him, a precision missile strike, and the smell of blood filled his nose. The walls around him slid away, grey stone replaced with smooth tile, and the air around him was clammy as it blew from unseen vents. He tried to fight his way to his feet, but the door was gone, and and the next step he took was on the bridge. 

***

_Melanis’ mouth still hangs open, shaping her last shout. Maybe she tried to give an order at the end, maybe she tried to lead whoever was left. Or maybe, whispers the cold observer in his head, she was just trying to shriek as they beat her to death._

_Garrus turns away, and stumbles into a table. He nearly goes down on one knee, but he steadies himself and keeps walking._

_“Melanis,” he says, and the air around him swallows up the name, leaving thick silence behind. The thought that every breath he takes was one of his squad’s last makes him want to send the air out of his lungs and back into theirs where it belongs, but he stays quiet._

_Quiet until he sees Erash’s body, and the sound that gets punched out of him isn’t a scream. It’s not a sob, or a sigh. It’s a sound he didn’t know he could make, a loose, bone-churned rattle that seems to climb out of his throat on its own power. There are teeth marks in —_

_“Erash,” says Garrus, forcing himself to look, to remember. He takes another step and stumbles over a loose boot. It’s Mierin’s. He can tell because she always wore them for watch, preferring the old soft leather to the heavier models she wore for patrol. The laces are broken and tied back together in a half-dozen places, and the heel is worn to a scrap, but she loved them. She’d never give them up. She yelled at Ripper once for teasing her about them, her broken-down boots that were older than Weaver._

_How she lost it doesn’t bear thinking about. So Garrus doesn’t, and picks up the boot instead._

_He slowly pivots back to Mierin, where she lies in Vortash’s arms. Now that Vortash is still too, Garrus can see how Mierin’s hands are fisted in the joints of Vortash’s armor._

_Her bare foot is the one part of her body that isn’t streaked with blood. Garrus hates that he has to cover it, but she loved her boots, she should have a matching pair. So he tugs the boot over her stiff foot and up her legs, doing up the laces as best he can until his fingers start to shake. He stops and knots the laces, and for a long, bleary moment, he lets his hand rest on her calf._

_No words. Just names. He’s already said hers, so he stands, listing to one side._

_Butler and Sensat by the door. Ripper and Monteague in the kitchen. Vortash holding Mierin next to the stairs. Grundan Krul, Erash, and Melanis thrown over the couches like trash. That leaves one._

_He hears Weaver, but not before he sees the bloody handprint on her stool. By the time he kneels down and finds her under her workbench, wide-eyed and shaking, he knows he can’t save any of them. He tries — Spirits, he tries, but there isn’t a thing, not one thing, in any of his pouches or pockets that can save Weaver._

_She calls him boss, and then she starts to cry._

_***_

Garrus pulled himself out of the memory, heart pounding, a fierce ache building behind his eyes and the taste of blood coating the inside of his mouth. _I bit my tongue_ , he thought, muzzy-headed and bemused. 

His omni-tool whined and crackled at his wrist, and threw off a weak flicker of sparks before going dead. At least his shields hadn’t fried in the sun. He had that much. The panic he’d felt when the sound began had faded, and he could stand — unsteadily, and he didn’t trust himself to throw rocks, much less aim his rifle — but standing meant bearing the weight of Omega. And that, he knew he could do. He was the only one left to do it. 

 _Get moving. Shepard needs you — even if she’ll kill you for thinking it._  

What laid behind the door didn’t matter. Garrus knew what it had done to him, and by the panic on Shepard’s face — panic that had driven her pale under her sunburn — it had done the same to her. 

What had she seen?

 _Questions later,_ he told himself, and bit his tongue again when one of the doors slid back farther than he expected and he fell to one side. The door tried to lurch back into place, and Garrus shoved back against it to hold it open, grunting with the effort as some slow force pushed the door closed. He gritted his teeth, still tasting blood, and shoved again. With an effort that made the new-healed skin on his shoulder cry out, he shoved the doors open and fell in through the gap. He reached for his rifle as he fell, tucking into a clumsy combat roll that left him dizzy but on his feet, and out of the path of the sunlight. Being thankful for the sun felt perverse, after all the frustration it had caused since they had landed, but now the slanted rays were an ally. He needed one, badly. 

He took two second to assess his surroundings. One inhale, one exhale: the time it took to raise his rifle, check the clip, and sight. Two seconds: all the time it took for him to see Tali crumple gracefully with a weak sigh against her terminal and go still, her back rising slightly with each breath. 

Two seconds: long enough to see Shepard on her back, arms splayed at her sides and her head thrown back, blood on her chin, as a long-fingered hand peeled her mouth open. The hand, the arm, everything the fingers were attached to blurred in the light, a jumble of limbs and torso — and a heavy, white mask-like face, that turned toward him slowly. 

“You,” it hissed, drawing out the word into a groan, and then into a noise like glass being ground into sand. Garrus cringed away from it as it drove deep into his head, aiming unerringly for the bitterest moment. 

_“They were so good,” says Weaver. The fingernails on the hand gripping his have turned blue._

He shook himself, revulsion warring with grief in a sick heave, and sighted again. The thing’s face was turned back to Shepard, and its obscured body curled over hers, fingers prying at her lips and nose. And Shepard did _nothing_. She just let herself be lifted, face empty, as the thing reached into her mouth. 

Not Shepard, not now.  

“No!” 

His voice cracked through the room with all the old force of command. Garrus barely recognized it. That voice had been buried under the sharp teeth of grief for three months, while he played with numbers and tried not to think about his squad. Or Shepard. But that voice, and the conviction to go with it, had survived intact. Shepard’s gift to him: faith, in his squad, in himself, in _her,_ whatever she was. As long as she was here, they could fight. Shepard and Vakarian.  

The thing jolted at the sound of his voice, and tumbled away from Shepard, hissing as it backed into a shadowed corner and faded from his sight. 

Shepard dropped, her head hitting the floor with a solid thud and bouncing once before she went still. One arm twisted under her body at a painful angle, and her hair tumbled loose from its knot. Garrus could still see the slick, too-red smear of blood on her mouth and chin. The only sounds in the room were Tali’s low sighs and his own ragged breathing. 

“Shepard,” he called, voice hoarse, and moved as fast as his legs allowed to her side, kneeling next to her and rolling her to her side. “Shepard, Spirits, please.” He knew he was begging, and that he should be ashamed of himself, but any shame would wait until he knew that she hadn’t let herself be eaten alive. When he bent and leaned his cheek close to her mouth, the slow slide of air over his cheek made him shiver. Since she wasn’t awake to know, he let himself thread his fingers through her hair, and wiped the blood away from her chin. 

He barely noticed the low scrape of sand on metal as the doors began to close. It was only when the sunlight thinned to a stark sliver of gold that Garrus looked up, just in time to see the doors seal shut against the light. 

Garrus froze with the tips of his fingers on Shepard’s cheek. 

 _Think, Vakarian_ , he told himself. _Be smarter. What do you do?_  

Garrus asked, but Archangel answered, the old, lost authority spreading through him. And Spirits help him, he’d missed it: the simplicity, the joy, harsh righteousness, even the fury. Fury meant defense. 

_You have unknown hostiles and two squadmates down. Those are the facts. Light is your first priority, then securing the perimeter._

_Against_ what? 

 _Doesn’t matter. Now,_ light. 

He fumbled for the flashlight on his rifle and flicked it on. The cold blue light reached Tali and fell over Shepard’s face, where the trickle of blood from her nose had slowed but not stopped. But she was breathing, and so was Tali. 

_Get moving. The perimeter next._

The shadows fled from the beam of his flashlight, flooding back as soon as the light moved away. Garrus kept his gaze just ahead of the light, crouched over Shepard’s body, and listened. Some instinct, a remnant from the time when turians had been the hunted on Palaven, made him wary of his sight. To survive, he needed more. He needed to _listen._   

For what? Claws in the sand, a hiss in the dark? 

 _No_ , said the part of him that was still and always would be Archangel. _You’ve heard it before. You’ve seen the mouth it comes out of. Stop thinking and pay attention._

Easier said than done; nothing moved in the dark, but Garrus felt pressure along his spine. Something beckoned, just beyond the reach of his senses. Time wanted to unravel. Counting the seconds or the beat of his heart didn’t help. The dark had its seductive pull, a whisper over his skin, telling him to give in and let the silence smother him, like an insect in resin. And then there would be peace — for him, for Tali, for Shepard. No more throwing themselves against another impossible enemy. They could forget the fight and just breathe until the air ran out, and then the galaxy could forget them with the rest of the ruins on Haestrom. 

No more time. No more wondering if he’d gone mad the day Shepard died, and dreamed elaborately, desperately, for two years. No more dry and unending mourning. He was so tired, his head so heavy. Who could blame him for wanting to lie down, with Shepard in reach, Shepard alive and breathing? What if the sound of air in her lungs was the last thing he heard? How horrible could resting be, if she was there? 

No one could blame him, but forgetting was a betrayal: a monstrous, plausible betrayal. Omega may have begun as a way to forget, but it became more — a mission, a life, a family. His family. Garrus was the last of Archangel, and he couldn’t leave that behind, no matter how tired he was. There was still work to do. One last fight, one last fire to kindle, and the galaxy would be bright and clean again. 

Steel might be in his spine and shoulders, thanks to his father, but it had taken Shepard, living and dead, to forge that steel into a weapon. 

 _No,_ said Archangel’s voice. His voice. _Into_ armor _. She always called herself the weapon. You’re the armor. So stand up. You can go a little further on your own._

He stood slowly, and turned to face the door. The exhaustion tugged at him, but the call was distant, easy to resist now. He had a purpose. An enemy. 

 _Always did do better with something to fight_. 

His visor gave him only bad news, even without him touching the door. It had sealed, without even a seam to hint that it had been anything more than an inert sheet of metal. But he had the last of the demolition charges in his thigh pouch, and while he was no expert, he could blast their way out and not kill them.

Probably. 

Garrus started to laugh, but just out of arms’-reach, the air moved, a murmur-soft explosion. Garrus spun around, senses crackling as his blood sparked, bright and aware. He reached for his rifle, trying to pinpoint the sound’s source with his flashlight. 

“Not that way,” said a cracked-stone voice that tightened his spine, a snarl building in his chest. The shadows at the edge of the flashlight’s beam opened like the petals of a dying flower, and a face swam out of the darkness. “That way is closed to you.”

He’d never seen the woman arrive. If she stitched herself together out of shadows on Omega, he hadn’t been looking when it happened. Now he watched her rise out of the dark, arms following shoulders, down to black-armored hips that faded out of the light. 

She held up her cracked hands, eyes blank and bright as ever, and opened her mouth. 

“Garrus —“ 

“You,” he snarled, a vast wave of hate carving through his fear and exhaustion. Even the grief he carried like a rock in his throat thinned to a sliver. “What do you _want?"_  

The question — or the bitter hate woven through his voice — stunned the woman. She shut her mouth. A frown flickered across her face, the scars on her cheeks bunching, and she let her hands fall to her sides. 

Garrus searched his mind for something to say to her — anything, any words to throw in her face like broken glass. “Nothing to say?” He heard the sneer in his voice, too loud, and couldn’t bring himself to care. If the woman couldn’t find a reply, he’d fill the silence on his own.  

“More useless warnings?” he spat, the hate still rising in him — and Spirits, it felt _good_. He’d had so few pleasures in the past three months — hearing the shot that killed Garm, hearing Tali was on Haestrom, Shepard’s wrist under his fingers — and the savage delight he took in being angry, in being cruel, made him light-headed. “You’re late. At least last time you came before they all died.” 

The woman’s face spasmed, and her lips opened on white teeth and a black, black throat. “I tried,” she said, in a thin voice on the edge of a whisper. “There were — I am sorry." 

“I don’t care,” Garrus shot back, still reveling in the heat in his gut. Finally, finally, a target for his fury. “Did you do this?” He swept an arm toward Tali and Shepard, and the woman shrank back into her armor. “The last time you touched Shepard, she was gone for hours. Is this what you do? Play with our minds for fun?” A horrible image filled his head: dirt under a man’s fingernails, blood caked under his nose. “On Horizon —“ 

“No!” The woman’s shout filled the room, and her teeth were bared when she looked up. “I am not like — I am not _wrong._ ” She held up her hands, where the deep cracks spread under her armor, and Garrus saw the thin black lines on her neck that ended just under her jaw. “I am _yours_ ,” she said, still shouting. “I tried to warn Shepard, but these things are old, they have waited, they are hungry, and she — they taste her will and they want more. They want what she remembers.” She shuddered. “They want your memories. Of Omega. It is sweet to them. They would fill their mouths on what you carry.” 

She knelt, the movement too fast for Garrus to follow with his flashlight. By the time he had her in sight again, the woman was bent over Tali, her hands hovering over Tali’s mask. “There is no time, no time at all, we have such heavy loads and we have no way to carry them, so much to remember and already so much has been lost —“ 

“So you two do know each other,” said a weak voice at his feet. “Good. Saves me an introduction.” 

Garrus and the woman went still, their eyes locked on Shepard as she twisted awkwardly in her armor and sat up. 

 _Say something_ , he told himself, as relief swept over him. _Shepard is awake. Ask her…_

Ask her what? He didn’t know where to start — he was ready to fight, not ask questions, and his hand fell away from his rifle to hang loose at his side. All he could do was watch as Shepard swiped a hand under her nose and stood. Something in her had changed — something had opened, or woken up, because now warmth spread under her skin, and her eyes were bright as they met his. 

And she _smiled_ , the old private smile. The smile that he would catch across the room during the evening meetings, or that greeted him when he woke for his watch. He’d longed for that smile, for the slow, rich curve of her mouth, and for everything it meant. Death and onward. 

She might have been wearing new armor, with new, clean skin stretched over her rebuilt bones, but Garrus felt a shudder run through him as she lifted her eyes and met his gaze. Not of revulsion, not of fear, but recognition: _this_ was Shepard. Not the bleak, cold woman who had saved him on Omega, but _his_ Shepard, fierce-eyed and straight-backed, a hunter’s smile on her mouth. The Commander, the woman who could face down a Reaper and not flinch, who could drag herself out of whatever nightmare memory had trapped her — the woman who could come back from the dead. 

Shepard rolled her shoulders back and sucked in a breath, flaring her corona on the exhale. She hummed, satisfied, and turned her gaze toward the woman. In spite of his anger and confusion, Garrus found himself almost pitying the woman, who shrank under Shepard’s gaze.

“You have till Tali wakes up to tell me what the _sarcophagus_ is,” Shepard said, her voice smooth and hard as obsidian. 

 


	37. Chapter 37

The word _sarcophagus_ tumbled out of Shepard’s mouth like a stone, like a curse. It took a moment for Garrus’ translator to catch up, but then the turian word came through his comms. 

 _Tomb_. It was just another word for _tomb._

 _I can’t say I’m surprised,_ thought Garrus, too exhausted for sarcasm. _What else could it mean?_

If he’d listened to that plausible, yearning voice, and laid his head next to Shepard’s, the room would have been a tomb, instead of a trap. 

The back of his neck prickled and flushed hot. Somewhere in the not-quite distance, his head ached, but he held the potential misery at arms’-length. He already had enough to worry about, right in front of him: Tali, still and quiet on the ground, the woman kneeling by her head, the darkness gathered and waiting all around them. And Shepard, her eyes locked in a staring contest with the woman, her private smile sharpening to a sliver of white teeth.

A bare handful of seconds passed before Shepard groaned and reeled away. “Hurts more than the last time,” she murmured, scrubbing at her mouth with the back of her hand. “Fuck. It _hurts._ Can’t think.” 

“Shepard?” Garrus swung the flashlight to follow Shepard as she staggered against toward the wall. “What are you — are you all right?” The words _last time_ clattered in his head. When? And _how_ could he have missed it?  

“Horizon,” said the woman. In the thin blue beam of Garrus’ flashlight, her eyes flashed like an animal’s. “Not all of them were Collectors,” she said. “Not all. Some were _sour_ , they were hungry, they followed the taste —“ 

He let out a groan of his own. There had to be a limit to the garbage spilling from the woman’s mouth. There had to be a place where the cryptic half-answers _stopped_ and the truth came out. 

Shepard coughed wetly and spat to the side. “Not choking yet,” she slurred. Garrus tore his gaze away from the woman and Tali — reluctantly; you don’t turn your back on an enemy, you don’t give them more weapons than they already have — and stepped closer to Shepard. She met his eyes with a dazed, weary smile, so pale the white of her eyes looked blue against her skin. 

“It’s always Akuze,” she said, in a flat voice, calm as a dead sea. “I can’t get away from it. Can’t let it go. Haven’t choked yet. That’s something, right?” 

Garrus opened his mouth, but Shepard cut him off with a shake of her head, wiping at the trickle of blood from her nose. 

“I know why they don’t want Alchera,” she said. Garrus recoiled from how the words rolled out of her mouth as flat as paper “Most of the crew lived. Not enough to feed on. Akuze, that was me and Toombs. And now it’s just me, because I…killed Toombs.” Her mouth sagged in a broken line, and she would have tumbled forward, face-first into the ground, if Garrus hadn’t caught her with his free hand and held her up. 

Her dull eyes met his, no recognition in them, before her gaze moved past his face and sharpened so abruptly he pulled back, startled. 

“No,” she snapped. “Not me. Tali. _Help Tali._ ” 

The cowl of his armor kept him from seeing more than the woman’s hand reaching toward them, little more than a blur in the darkness. 

“Nor,” Shepard said. “Tali.” 

“You are —“ the woman protested, even as she crouched again, but Shepard gave another hard shake of her head. 

“I’m not thinking straight.” Shepard reached up and gripped Garrus’ wrist, squeezing until he looked at her. “It should have been the first thing I said,” she said. “I can barely think, my head —“ She pushed away from the wall, weaving a little even without letting go of Garrus’ wrist. “I just hear that damn word, over and over.” 

 _Sarcophagus_. Garrus ignored the slow clockwise turn of dread in his gut, and kept his eyes on Shepard. 

“What the hell happened in here, Shepard?” Impossible to keep the harsh edge out of his voice; the way she said _I know why they don’t want Alchera_ still made him sick, made him dizzy. “That thing — you’ve seen it before?” 

She gave him a weak, wry smile, dried blood flaking off her lips. “Which thing, Garrus?” she asked. “We’re spoiled for choice here.” 

Frustration snapped at his control; he barely resisted the impulse to pull his arm out of her grasp. “I don’t find any of this funny,” he hissed. “The woman — you don’t remember what she did, do you?” 

Shepard paused. A grimace, not all from pain, flashed over her face. “Omega.” She sighed. “Garrus, I don’t remember, but you’ve got to believe me. Nor’s not going to hurt Tali.” 

“ _Nor?_ She has a name? You -- you’ve got to be kidding me.” This time, he did pull his arm away, and took a step back. “You actually listen to her?” 

The anger from his last days on Omega rolled sluggishly through him. Oh, he had hoped, seeing the old smile, that she would have something more than a handful of memories. Hadn’t they paid enough already, to be allowed just one happy moment? 

If not that, why couldn’t she remember the woman, and how they had first seen her with her fingers tracing a bullethole in a corpse’s armor? Or how a touch had sent Shepard spiraling away?

Grief didn’t soften his anger; it coated the anger’s killing edge with poison, and it burned as it moved through him. Three months. Ninety days. They were _dead_ , Mierin had lost one of her boots and Monteague hadn’t reached Ripper before they bled out, and how could he be angry at Shepard for not being there, when he had let Sidonis lead him away? 

_It would be so much easier to forget, to let it all go as you lay down your head and let your breath wash away the anger, the grief, the memory. Let this room be where you let your watch end. Memory is a curse that you do not need to suffer. No more of this dry ache. No more questioning yourself. No more —_

He shuddered. The room was stifling, but his hide had gone clammy under his armor as the plausible whisper worked its way into his head. Yes, it would be easier to lie down and forget, but it wasn’t what was right. It wasn’t what was _best._ The possibility of rest tempted him: to feel nothing but the darkness rolling over him in quiet, patient waves until Garrus Vakarian was nothing more than a name, a footnote, a — 

“Garrus.” 

Shepard’s voice. Shepard’s hand on his arm. Shepard’s eyes on his. Pulling him back, anchoring him against the current. She said his name again, and again, until he nodded.  

“She won’t hurt Tali,” she said. 

The inertia faded; Garrus was himself again, with his aching head and sore legs. “How do you know?” 

“Do you trust me?” Shepard countered.  

The question startled him so completely it offended him. Did he _trust_ her? He was here, wasn’t he? He’d followed her again, back to the _Normandy,_ on another mission into hell’s mouth. After that, and after _Ilium_ , she still had to ask about trust? His hand tightened around the forgotten flashlight until his armor creaked and his fingers ached. Of course he did. 

Her eyes stayed focused on his, pale and steady. She already knew the answer, he realized. It was the same answer he’d give her if she asked _do you have my six_? 

“Yes,” he said, not for her, but for himself. The answer would always yes; armor against what whispered in the dark.  

Her grip on his arm didn’t loosen; it tightened, the pressure almost painful through his armor. “I trust her,” she said. “I know it’s hard, but she’s here to help.” Shepard winced, her free hand going to her temple, but she recovered almost instantly, her eyes still fierce. 

Trust or not, Garrus nearly asked _How?_ He remembered the empty, cold bed stretching out next to him, and his promise of waiting for five days. Being sure of Shepard was easy. The rest of the universe presented a challenge. 

“It is done, Shepard,” said the woman. Garrus turned in time to see the woman rise, hands clasped behind her back, and step into the shadows clustered along the wall. At the woman’s feet, Tali groaned and pushed herself up on her elbows, lifting a hand halfway to her head before letting it fall back to the ground.

“Keelah,” Tali murmured. “Head hurts. Belit? Vor? Are you —“ She turned her head. The beam of Garrus’ flashlight reflected off her mask, her eyes two dim sparks in a wash of violet. “Shepard, I — Garrus? What are you doing here?” She sounded sleep-drugged, voice a little blank with shock, but still so wholly like herself that Garrus couldn’t find the words to reply. He thought he could smell her — engine grease, eezo, fabric dye, and something warm and redolent with spices — through the stale air.  

Shepard let go of his arm and crossed the room. Slowly, with a hitch in her step that made his throat ache, but without a stumble. She crouched at Tali’s side, with one arm under Tali’s shoulders and her free hand pressed against the ground for balance. Her new armor didn’t suit her; too heavy, too bulky. Garrus missed her old armor, with its sleek, predatory lines, her body familiar ground underneath it.  

Dangerous, distracting thoughts. He focused again and brought the light to bear on Tali and Shepard’s faces while he turned his hearing outward, listening for anything beyond their breathing or Shepard’s soft murmur as she eased Tali off the ground. 

“Take it easy, Tali,” she said. “Might take you a minute to find your feet.” 

“I’m dizzy,” Tali said, plaintively, younger than ever. “Did I hit my head? Are the geth still out there?” _If they are_ , said the undertone in her voice, clear enough for Garrus to hear without subvocals, _kill them all. Make them pay for what they did to us._

Thrace’s voice spoke in Garrus’ head, stern and implacable as a fortress. _Debts that demand blood never get paid, son_ , said Thrace’s voice, calm . _Don’t you ever forget that. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying._  

 _You might be right, Dad_ , Garrus thought, hand tightening around the flashlight again. His arm was starting to ache. _But that’s not going to stop me from trying. Some debts you have to try to collect. Isn’t that right, Sidonis?_

The name set a brushfire in his head, but he shoved the name and the face away. Not here. Not now. He needed to save his anger, ration it out in small, frozen doses. He needed to get out of here first, with Shepard and Tali in one piece, and then he could go back to his hard bed and plan, piece by piece, what he would do to Sidonis when he found him. 

Giving into his anger, letting himself dream of getting payment for that debt, was as tempting in its way as the voice telling him to lie down and sleep. He could lose himself in either, in rest or revenge and —  

Not here. Not now. Shepard was calling his name.  

He blinked, flushing and guilty, and met her eyes.  

“Can you take Tali? I can’t…” Her voice drifted, and he saw the trickle of blood from her nose had started to run again, thick, rich, and black in the beam of his flashlight. “I don’t want to drop her,” she said, with a weak smile.  

Tali tried to pull away, weaving slightly. “Shepard, are you all right?” The moment she caught sight of Shepard’s face, she gasped. “Keelah, you’re bleeding! What happened?” 

“Had a bad moment,” Shepard said as Garrus eased Tali into the curve of his free arm. He couldn’t get to his weapons now, but that thought didn’t bother him as much as what Shepard had said did. _A bad moment_ , she said, when what she meant was Akuze, awake and hungry in her head. “I’ll be fine.” She plucked the flashlight out of Garrus’ hand and turned, pointing the beam at Nor, still standing silent and impassive against the wall. 

Tali gasped. “I _saw_ her.” She pulled her arms tight to her chest. “Before the geth came. She was watching me from one of the bridges. I thought it was a mirage. I…” She shook her head, still staring at Nor. “What’s going on, Garrus?” 

He tried to find a way to explain — _you were attacked by something that makes you live your worst memories all over again, which would have killed you, except Shepard distracted it, and now something that I hoped was a hallucination put your brain back together —_ but in the end, settled for saying, “Even for us, it’s complicated.” 

Tali peered up at him, blinking, then looked back at Shepard without saying anything. 

Shepard and Nor stared at each other, without speaking, two unmoving figures in black armor. 

“I know what that cost you,” said Shepard finally. “Thank you.” The hand holding the flashlight shook, but she held herself straight, without wavering. 

Nor nodded. She stepped away from the wall, hands outstretched, and Garrus felt a lurch of not possessiveness, but the need to put himself between Shepard and Nor. Tali seemed fine, but he couldn’t shake the mistrust. Not yet, and not with Shepard. 

“I could help you,” said Nor, but before her hands reached Shepard — hands that were cracked in a fine web of raw, deep cuts that made Tali gasp again — Shepard stepped away. She shook her head. 

“Don’t waste it on me. I had my chance.” 

“Shepard,” said Nor. “Let me help, this is not — this ground is sour, and you are in no condition to walk it if you do not let me help.”  

“It’s time I stopped letting this chase me in circles.” Shepard let out a dry, brittle laugh, and glanced over her shoulder at Garrus, almost smiling. Her words might have been meant for Nor, but she didn’t look away from him as she spoke. His heart clenched. “But I’ve got to face it first.” 

Nor shifted, her hands twitching in the air, but she nodded and stepped back. 

“And now that Tali’s awake, you can finally tell us what the _sarcophagus_ is.” 

“The Sarcophagus?” said Tali, tearing her gaze away from Nor with a jerk of her shoulders. “Where did you hear about that?” 

 Shepard whipped her head around, eyes wide. “You know what it is?” she said. 

Tali nodded, shrinking back into the curve of Garrus’ arm under Shepard’s bright scrutiny. He felt like backing away too; he’d seen that look before, and even when he wasn’t on the receiving end, it still made him feel like prey flushed from cover. 

“Tell me,” said Shepard. “Everything you know.”  

Tali twisted her hands together. “We’re right above it. But it’s just a _room_ , Shepard. There’s nothing in it. The geth took anything of value years ago, just like the rest of the compound. Why does it matter?” 

“Everything matters,” Shepard murmured. She swore, spat to the side, and swore again, one hand moving to the side of her head. Garrus’ headache stirred, then faded as Shepard looked up, her jaw set. “How do we get down there?” 

“There’s a door behind you,” said Tali. “Hidden in the rock. But I promise you, Shepard, there’s nothing down there.” 

Shepard ignored her. The hard set of her jawline was all Garrus saw before she turned her back on him and Tali as if they no longer existed. Over her shoulder, Nor watched him, eyes gleaming in the dark, until Shepard found the handle and pulled it down. 

The door opened with a dusty groan, cold air pouring out of a wide, lightless tunnel. Shepard sighed. The weariness in the sound carved its way through Garrus, down to his gut. He watched her wince, her fingertips brushing her temple; then she rolled her shoulders back, and he knew exactly what she would say before her voice traveled back to him. 

*** 

Shepard stared into the tunnel for a long time. The air flowing out of the tunnel slid over the sunburn on her nose and cheeks; for a moment, she closed her eyes and sighed. Compared to the throbbing in her head, the sunburn barely registered, but relief was relief. Flaring her corona had let off some of the pressure, and bought her a few minutes, but it lasted a barely a minute before the pain crept in again. 

If she thought medi-gel would help, she’d already have pumped herself full of it, but the only thing that could really fix her was too precious to waste. 

 _I can find my own happy memories._ Shepard opened her eyes and raised the flashlight. _That’s got to be armor enough, right?_  

 _Can you really, Shepard?_ asked a sly, near-contemptuous voice. _You couldn’t last time. Just focusing on the fight, trying to get through the day. You’ve done it for years. You couldn’t find something happy in this head of yours if you tried. Give up._

She sighed again, audibly this time, and heard Garrus shift behind her as her sigh turned into a wince. _Get it together, Shepard_ , she told herself, and straightened. _If there’s one thing you can do, it’s keep going._

“Neither of you have to go with me,” she said. Her voice echoed back to her, flattened by its journey over the rocks. “You should focus on finding a way out. I’ll —“ 

Garrus’ voice might have been chipped out of the rock itself. “Not happening.”  

Tali murmured an agreement. Shepard caught herself before she sighed again, and met Nor’s eyes by accident, just in time to see Nor raise one shoulder in the infuriating half-shrug. 

Shepard felt her mouth twitch in a smile. It didn’t do anything for the storm waiting to break in her head, but knowing she didn’t have to face whatever lay under her feet alone was another, unexpected relief.  

She never knew how long the journey took. Only Tali’s omni-tool still worked, but after trying to raise Miranda on the squad comm channel, Shepard avoided asking her to check the chronometer. It seemed like pressing their luck to know how much time had passed since she Charged into the observatory. Was it reluctance, or superstition? Trying to answer that question made her pulse throb a warning through her neck and temples. She let it fade into the distance, concentrating on the heavy tread of her footsteps and keeping the flashlight held high. 

So they walked in silence, through a blank tunnel, as empty and blameless as a sky after a thunderstorm. Nor hovered at her side, staring at the side of her face, but Shepard ignored her. Given half a chance, Nor would crack the flesh on her hands down to the bone to help — Shepard was as sure of that as she was of the air in her lungs, as sure of Garrus and Tali’s footsteps behind her. Shepard wanted the relief, but some quiet conviction told her to wait. _You’ve had your chance, Shepard. Bear this. Carry it down._

Down and down, till the last of Haestrom’s heat was gone and her breath fogged ahead of her. Shepard waited for Garrus to complain about the temperature — _turians don’t like the cold, Shepard, did I ever mention that?_ — but he didn’t make a sound, not even when the moisture beaded on the smooth walls turned to slick sheets of ice.  

 _Where am I taking us?_ She gnawed the inside of her lip and counted her footsteps. _I’m trusting what I saw in a nightmare. God, I could be leading us into another trap._

No, she wasn’t. Wherever they were going, whatever they would find, it wasn’t a trap. Which didn’t narrow the field of possibilities too much, but the conviction stayed. She had to keep walking, she had to carry the pain in her head. Just a few more steps, not that much farther now.  

The tunnel abruptly widened ahead of them, to a yawning gap torn in the stone. Beyond it lay a cavern, filled with black jagged edges, and the sound of running water. Shepard stopped and looked at Nor, arching one eyebrow in a question she was too worn out to ask. So tired, tired enough to lie down and let herself freeze all over again. She could sleep until her lungs froze, and it would be a kinder death than fire. The cold would seal away her memories, just like it sealed away Omega, and she could rest, safe and forgotten. No one would call her name again, no more impossibilities. No more pain waiting at the edge of her skull, restive and hungry. No more — 

Her body hadn’t lost all its momentum. It carried her the last few steps into the cavern without her telling it to, only stopping when her boots splashed in shallow water. Ahead of her, she sensed a massive shape, stretching up out of sight. 

“Shepard,” said Nor — and was that dread in the spirit’s voice? — “we have arrived. It is here. The Sarcophagus.”  

Shepard’s first thought was blank awe. She turned the beam of the flashlight up to follow the shape filling the cavern. Black stone flowed in every direction in sprawling, jagged spokes, with a towering pillar filling the center of the room. The thing was too large to make sense of; even if light filled the cavern, her eyes could only process it in sections, like the way the veins of slick, oily color ran through the stone — color that she tasted, and heard, sweet-sour notes pricking along her tongue. 

Silently, Nor walked ahead of Shepard through the dark water, stopping when it reached her knees, and stood as still and silent as the rock itself, her head tilted up.

“This is —“ Tali made a weak, choked noise behind Shepard. A moment later, a second beam of light joined Shepard’s, and Tali moved to stand at Shepard’s left. “The records just said it was an empty room,” she said, shaking her head. “I thought the name was a joke, but this is — I don’t know what to say.” 

Shepard’s mouth and sinuses ached. The space behind her eyes ached. Everything _ached_ , and the sickly light woven through the rock wasn’t helping. “No one get too close,” she said, over a whispered _Keelah_ from Tali’s direction. “Until we know what this thing can do, we aren’t taking any chances.” 

“Besides coming down here to begin with.” Garrus circled around to her right. He plucked the flashlight from her hand and ran it up the length of the main pillar. “This thing is huge.” His eyes met hers, and he tossed her a quick, unexpected grin she only caught thanks to the light from his visor. “The Thorian wasn’t enough for you, Shepard?” 

“You know me, Garrus,” she said, fighting to keep her tone light as her head pulsed a warning and her vision wavered. “Never could resist creepy.” 

“And we’ve got that to spare.” He hummed and backed away from the pillar. “It’s just stone, but I don’t like it. Probably sounds stupid, but after what we saw up above, I’m not trusting anything.” 

Shepard chose to ignore the barbed edge to his words, and moved carefully through the water, testing each footing before putting her full weight on it. Was this all she had seen in her vision? Dead rock and uneasy streaks of color?  

A new burst of pain cut her off. _Running out of time, Shepard_ , warned the sly voice. _Better get thinking all those lovely thoughts._ “It’s more than just stone.” Her voice rang distantly in her ears. “It’s —“  

 _Sleeping. Waiting._ Yes, those were the words, or as close as she could get. The thing in front of her wasn’t alive in any way she could comprehend —  

 _No._ She moaned, the color’s taste thickening and curdling in her mouth. 

_I am beyond your comprehension._

Like the peal of a maddened, cracked bell, Sovereign’s voice shuddered through her. 

_Before us, you are nothing. You exist because we allow it —_

“They thought it would bring them immortality.” Nor’s voice cut across Shepard’s mind like an arrow. “They did not know what would come after the Reapers rose, the sour ones, the ones who hunger, the ones who tasted your will and —“ The spirit paused. “I am sorry, Shepard,” she said, and Shepard sobbed, too late for dread to warn her away. “This will —“  

— _and you will end because we demand it._

When the pain hit — truly hit, and Horizon was nothing, nothing at all in comparison — she felt the blood vessels in her sinuses and the roof of her mouth break. Blood coated her mouth and throat, and twisted in her stomach, all copper and iron.

_You are an insect. Your will is an affront to us. Lie down and die. This we demand. This we shall receive. Your little life is over._

_No!_ Shepard clawed at her temples. She knew the voice. _No, you bastards, I won’t just lie down -_  

There were fingers in her mouth again, plucking at her tongue, sliding down her throat and up, into her head, where the pain salted her guilt. They would make a meal of her, piece by piece, and what they didn’t want would slip under the water and be washed away. She was too heavy to float. Too heavy to fight. Akuze took up so much _space_.  

 _Let it go. You lived. So live. Take the good and the bad._ She pressed her hands to her temples as a fresh, vicious twist stabbed through her head. _Take it all, dammit, and let Akuze go. Remember it, but don’t let it choke you._

She’d never be free of Akuze, or any of the dead worlds she carried in her heart — but she could be forgiven, and washed clean. There would always be more dead worlds, more failures to pile on her back. The important thing was not to forget what good she had done along the way.  

Simple truth, but oh, it had taken her so long to believe it. What else was true? 

She was Commander Shepard, the first human Spectre, the captain of the _Normandy,_ the savior of the Citadel. She was Hannah Shepard’s daughter. She was still standing. Death hadn’t been able to hold her. 

She still had work to do, but she wasn’t alone. The simplest truth of all: she was not alone. She never had been. Whatever the weight on her back, it would never be too heavy.  

 _Live_ , she told herself, squeezing her eyes shut. _It’s that simple. For Mom, for Lamia, for Garrus, for everyone who gives a shit about whether or not you come home. For yourself, too._  

_For me._

The pain in her head crescendoed into a wail. It blotted out every other sensation, good or bad, but Shepard had her truth clenched in her fists: _remember it all and live._ Pressure exploded in her sinuses, blood filled her mouth, but she was Commander Shepard, and she held the words in her hands as the pain grew. She would not break, even when the darkness around her swarmed into her head, ready to carry her back to Akuze and pick the bones of her memories clean.  

_— no, no, living is more of this, over and over, oh lovely one, let us taste you and take it away, we will make you clean again, clean as water clean as snow you will be the snow driven through the mountains by the wind, let us drink down what is in your head and carry it far from you, our mouths are waiting for what you hold, your will let us eat your will, you will not need it, lay down and be free of all of this, we will make you free of this we will eat you, sweet one, eat you up —_

No. She would not be _eaten_. She inhaled, fighting past the blood and bile in her throat, and focused.  

 _All of it._  

The light of the Serpent Nebula flowing over her mother’s face.The scent of peonies. Ash crowing over beating Tali at Skyllian Five. Waking up without an alarm. Lamia’s hands running slowly through mnemonic forms. The first conscious Charge. Thick toast smothered with butter. Velvet moving over her bare skin. The fleets tearing Sovereign apart, the cheers from the _Normandy_ as the monster blasted one long death note into space. Garrus sleeping, light gathered under his skin. 

Not all the worlds in her heart were dead, and there were still worlds to come, _after_ —  

Something screamed. The sound rose from the rocks under her feet, not a living throat, and as the scream ratcheted higher, the pressure in her head sank back to echo in her bones. 

  _All of it_ , thought Shepard, a golden joy bursting in her. _I’ll take it all._  

Incredibly, she started to laugh, the sound buoyant against the scream. Could it really be this easy? Nothing ever was, but maybe, maybe it could. It had been so long since she had felt hope solid enough to clutch in both hands, and how strange to find it in a place so unforgiving -- but she hoped, and laughed, the pain fading farther back with every moment. 

The scream broke. Shepard opened her eyes, the last of her laughter fading, and caught Garrus’ stunned look before the rocks under their feet cracked, and the Sarcophagus began to crumble. 

Light -- faint light, but hot and golden -- began to shine on the far side of the cavern.  

“Let’s move!” Shepard yelled, and started to run. 

 


	38. Chapter 38

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the horrible delay! But thank you for reading, as always! 
> 
> And just as a quick note -- I've updated the story name to simply " **Ghost** ", since that's how most people refer to it. Same story, shortened title. 
> 
> Onward! <3

The briefing didn't last long; Shepard didn't see the point in drawing it out when Tali's focus was so obviously on the three quarians down in Medbay, and when she herself had to dance around the truth of the mission, skating up to the lie but never over the edge. She felt dirty after five minutes, filthy after ten. Miranda's face grew more pinched with every minute that passed, until Shepard finally put them all out of their misery and sent them to the showers. 

Through it all, Garrus' eyes never left her face. _Now is not the time to be so obvious_ , she thought at him, but without any real conviction. It was only a matter of time before her XO figured out that something lay between Shepard and Garrus. Why bother hiding it? 

_Because I don't want this used against me_ , she thought as she rode the elevator. _I don't want it used against Garrus. Miranda might be on my side — provisionally — but I can't forget who she reports to._

***

With Sovereign behind her, Shepard thought she might have finally learned how to describe concepts that defied words. She'd stared down something that claimed to be a god; she'd killed its avatar. Why couldn't she put together a single sentence that described the cavern, and what had gone on inside it? 

She rubbed her throat. A shower had done nothing to erase the feeling that cold, bone-thin fingers still swept her skin, even after turning up the water as hot as it would go. She had no bruises, and all the dried blood and sweat had been washed down the drain. Other than the violent sunburn, nothing remained to show what had passed on Haestrom. Outwardly, at least — she still had the dull, familiar throb of the headache pulsing deep in her skull, but it faded as she dried off.

When Shepard looked at herself in the mirror, she saw nothing new in her gaze. No new clarity, no truth. No hope. She just looked tired. Sunburned and tired. She brushed her fingers over the white marks on her shoulders one last time before shrugging into her ship uniform.

She had felt hope, even _joy_ on Haestrom, for a few moments, before it slipped through her fingers like water. She hadn't even noticed the loss at first, because she'd been too busy hauling Garrus and Tali out of the howling darkness. By the time she _did_ realize what had happened, all the joy was gone, replaced with weariness, with loneliness. For a handful of seconds, it had been _hers_ , and that joy gave her power. Strong enough to kill whatever the Sarcophagus was, strong enough to break the tie to Akuze. 

Not strong enough to hold on, though.

_Selfish_ , she told herself, finally cutting her eyes away from her fogged mirror. What should she have done? Left Garrus and Tali to haul themselves out? For once, what was _right_ and what was _best_ had overlapped, and everyone had gotten home alive. She'd had that joy once, and she could find it again. _I should be satisfied with what I managed to do. I saved as many as I could_ , she thought, before she remembered the two quarian bodies, their masks filled with blood. Her _good_ seemed so little, in the face of so much loss. 

Shepard shivered and rubbed her arms. Tali would mourn her team, as soon as the relief over having found some of them alive faded. Would that carry her back to the flotilla, to where some memories and familiar ground might soften the loss? 

_Selfish_ , Shepard told herself again, and walked out into her cabin. 

Nor hovered next to the bed, eyes turned up to the skylight. "Does it bother you?" she asked, not looking at Shepard. "The stars, the light, so close to where you sleep?" 

Shepard swallowed a groan, and gave her bed a longing look before facing Nor. "I wasn't sure when I'd see you again," she hedged. "Thought you might have other visits to make after what went down on Haestrom." 

Nor gave a look that Shepard would have called _frosty_ on someone living. "They shall keep, my _visits_. There is still time." She turned her face back up to the stars. "You felt free, for a little while. No more ice, no more hiding. It was…" Nor tilted her head to one shoulder, then the other, and the little movement woke something in Shepard's head. Not quite a memory, just a faded scrap of a single image: Nor smiling, head cocked to one side, against a dingy, bloodstained wall. 

"It was pleasurable," said Nor, bringing Shepard back to herself with a start. "Such things…we do not feel them for ourselves." When she looked back at Shepard, her mouth tipped upward at the corners, the scars on her cheeks bunching. "Thank you for that," she said. 

Shepard found herself smiling back, sparing half a thought for the memory of her first reaction to Nor: hostility, confusion, fear. Now, only the confusion remained, edged with frustration. "So," she said, when Nor kept smiling at her without saying a word, "why are you here? Not just to thank me, I hope. I don't even know what I did." 

"You let the weight fall off your back," said Nor. "It was enough, for a time. But there are more of them, more of —"

"More of what?" Shepard prompted, ready for the twinge of the needle in her spine. Her body didn't disappoint her; the needle blazed for one sharp, bright second when Nor kept speaking. 

"More of the soured ones," said Nor, her voice halting and unsure. Her smile slipped away, and her shoulders sagged. Her scarred face wasn't capable of much emotion, whether through lack of practice or some subtle restriction in her form, but Shepard knew what weariness looked like, no matter the face that wore it. "That was not the only Sarcophagus." 

Shepard had expected that. The Reapers had left their poisonous toys all over the galaxy, after all. But the thought of more of those broken, black shapes, waiting under other cities — 

"Goddammit." Shepard sighed. "Nothing's ever easy." She ran her fingers through her wet hair, tugging at the strands. "It's too much to ask that you know how many?" she asked, and felt a sharp pang of guilt when Nor shuddered and looked away. "Right. Let me guess, your rules?" 

"Do not ask me to break more than I already have," said Nor. "There are structures in place, and they must be respected. Otherwise, all is smoke and ash. All is…sour." 

In spite of her exhaustion, Shepard's curiosity leapt at the word _sour_ , and her mind jerked back to Haestrom, to the sensation of fingers on her throat and in her mouth. She fought not to gag, focusing past the memory to the teasing hint of an idea, thin scraps of information spun together. "Is that what you're risking? Becoming like one of those — things? They're not spirits like you, not anymore. They're —" 

_Revenants._

"— revenants," she finished, testing the word. It felt smooth, like a pebble on her tongue, but Nor's mouth twisted in a flash of disgust. "They've gone sour," Shepard went on. "Something about memory, they want — they want bad ones. It's like they're hungry for it. Or like they're empty." 

Nor said nothing. She stared at Shepard, offering no support or denial, her mouth twisted in what might have been pain. And then, without a sound or a flicker, she disappeared, so abruptly Shepard's eyes ached. 

Had Nor left because Shepard had somehow offended her? Or had Shepard cut too closely, seen too clearly? 

_Either way_ , _it's annoying as hell._ Shepard groused to herself, barely surprised at Nor's departure — she supposed she was getting used to it. Her tolerance for cryptic half-answers had increased impressively since her resurrection. She glanced at her bed again; trying to sleep tempted her, but she doubted she would manage it. Her mind didn't race; she had trained herself too well for that, but it had new information to worry over, new layers of mystery to peel back. 

To start: what, exactly, were the Sarcophagi? And what purpose did they serve for the Reapers? 

_Time for that later_. She had a crew to see to — most especially Tali, and the quarian survivors. 

Before she finished turning toward the door, the alert on her private terminal chimed. The elevator had just bypassed the CIC to come to her floor. Shepard had a moment of warm, irrational hope that it was Garrus, before EDI's cool voice intruded. 

"Commander, Operative Lawson requests entry." 

Ten seconds to prepare for a storm wasn't much, but Shepard smiled her gratitude up toward the ceiling. "Thank you, EDI."

She keyed the lock the moment the elevator stopped, and stepped back as Miranda blazed in, boot heels clicking on the tile. 

"Shepard," she said, without preamble and without turning around. "I know we've had our differences, and that the organization for which I work disgusts you, but I dislike purposefully being kept out of the loop. There is information I _must_ know, in order to do my job and to keep this ship running smoothly." Miranda inhaled sharply, and pivoted on one heel to stare at the fish tank, which was still, two months into the mission, quite empty of fish. 

Shepard waited while Miranda gathered herself, and leaned against the doorframe with her arms folded. She caught herself just before she bit her lip, but she couldn't help feeling a wash of regret. Miranda had trusted her with her family, the good and the bad, and Shepard was still keeping secrets. A whole soul full of them. _Be reasonable,_ she thought. _If Miranda knew half of what happened on Haestrom, I'd be headed for the protein vats, and she'd grow herself a new Shepard. One who didn't think she'd been a ghost. One who didn't see spirits._

_One with a control chip._ Shepard bit her lip. Even shoved to the back of her mind, that particular confession still stung. 

"I understand that your resurrection has been hard on you," Miranda said at last. "Waking up to find yourself right in the middle of a war, one that the Alliance won't help you fight — I'm not unsympathetic, Shepard. But I get the sense you're keeping information from me, information vital to our mission. And with all due respect —." 

"Why is it whenever someone says _with all due respect_ , they really mean _kiss my ass?_ " Shepard asked rhetorically, and smiled another hard little smile when Miranda's reflected eyes narrowed at her. What would Ash have thought of Miranda, all polish and precision? "Go on, Miranda." 

"According to my omni-tool, you and Officer Vakarian were out of contact for only five minutes." Miranda paused, letting the unspoken question hang like smoke in the air: _what happened to you_? 

Five minutes. The memories of Akuze, the tongue on her neck, and the journey down to the Sarcophagus' black, rotted heart — it had all taken five minutes. Shepard had hardly been able to believe it, when she stumbled out into Haestrom's sick sunlight.

No; she believed it all too easily. She heard how the Sarcophagus screamed as it died. Something that old and powerful, with its ability to play with memory — why shouldn't it be able to twist time in and around itself until five minutes became five hours, with no one outside the wiser? 

_That's what I'm fighting,_ Shepard thought, another layer of weariness settling over her. _The Reapers play with time and I'm supposed to stop them._

She didn't answer Miranda's unspoken question. How could she? _Miranda, the Collectors are nothing more than wind-up toys. Let me tell you what was waiting down in the dark. Let me tell you what I saw when I was dead._

"If I withhold information," she said, holding Miranda's gaze, "there are valid reasons behind my decision to do so." 

Miranda scoffed, finally turning around. "What could be so vitally important that you'll risk the mission to keep it secret?" 

The barb hit home; Shepard winced inwardly, holding her body still, but her eyes flickered, and she knew Miranda had seen it. 

Was this a balance she wanted to strike, forever dancing on the knife's edge of a lie? Could she trust Miranda? She'd never know if she didn't try — and when had Commander Shepard started overthinking things? 

_Charge_ , she thought. 

"You have me there, Miranda," she said. Her heart began to pound; all or nothing. "Grab a seat. I don't think you're going to like what I'm about to tell you." 

*** 

Shepard was right: Miranda did _not_ like what Shepard told her, and wasted no time expressing it. 

"This is — utter insanity," Miranda said, for the second time, and if a larger tell existed for how badly rattled she was by Shepard's confession, Shepard couldn't imagine it. "Utter insanity," she said one last time, and stared at Shepard, her eyes cold and furious. Every muscle in Miranda's body tensed, poised to spring — not to flee, never to flee — but she seemed incapable of movement, or even deciding how to react beyond those few choked-off words.

_Did I just break my XO?_ Shepard wondered, watching Miranda's expression shift from confusion to anger, and every point in between. What she'd confessed to Miranda sounded more like a story told to scare children than anything resembling the truth She shifted on the couch. "I know how it sounds," she said. "But…there you have it." When Miranda simply stared back at her, wordless and silent, Shepard gave her a sly, exhausted grin. God, she was _tired._ "Still wondering why I never said anything before?" 

"It's ridiculous!" snapped Miranda. "If I hadn't evaluated your mental state myself —" She clenched her fists. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she seemed as upset about missing the symptoms of Shepard's insanity as she did about the illness itself. "You actually expect me to believe that you spent two years as a _ghost_ , and that the sightings in the Sahrabarik system aren't hallucinations, but collective representatives of _memory_?" 

"It would've be nice," said Shepard, glad she had kept the handful of more _intimate_ details of her un-life to herself. The ones she remembered, she thought to herself, rueful. 

Miranda made a short, disgusted noise. "Unbelievable. Either this is the clumsiest attempt at misdirection I've ever encountered, or you're completely delusional. I don't know which I find more offensive." 

"Not even going to consider that I might be telling the truth?" Shepard asked, and was rewarded with a look hot enough to melt iron. She sighed, and rubbed her temples. "Fine." 

There was one option left. The nuclear option, as likely to destroy what was left of her relationship with Miranda as it was to save it. Just thinking of using it made Shepard feel like a cheap magician, pulling trick rabbits out of hats and hoping no one saw the raw edges of her illusions. 

Instead of a rabbit from a hat, she was about to pull a spirit out of thin air — and that depended on Nor actually cooperating. 

She leaned back against the couch, trying to project a confidence she didn't quite feel, and watched Miranda's face move from disgust to disdain. "Nor," she said. "If you're not too busy, I'd appreciate you putting in an appearance right about now." 

It hadn't worked before; Nor was not a tame thing, trained to come when called, but she had always come when she was needed. With the force of a prayer, Shepard hoped that trend held and counted the seconds. _I'm asking a lot,_ she added silently. _But it's time to stop keeping secrets, Nor, even if the secret's you. We have to be in this together._

"Commander," Miranda said, icy, superior, and light years away from the woman who had made awkward, stilted puns on the shuttle to Haestrom, "this conversation is over." She stood, wiping her hands on her suit. "Thank you for your time." 

Shepard heard the explosion of air before Miranda finished her sentence. She let herself smile, smug as a cat in a patch of sun, as Miranda blinked, her perfect mouth dropping into a slack _o_ of shock. 

"What the hell," said Miranda, eloquence lost. She sank back to the couch as Nor edged into Shepard's peripheral vision. Her gaze traveled over Nor's form, taking in the black, scuffed armor, the tangled hair, the burnt-sugar skin. When Miranda's eyes reached Nor's face, Shepard watched her shiver.

"Sorry about the ambush, Miranda," said Shepard. 

"Ambush," Miranda said hoarsely. She laughed, unable to look away from Nor. "My God, you weren't — you aren't lying?" 

"Not one bit," replied Shepard, as sympathetic as she dared. 

"It can't be real." Miranda finally tore her gaze from Nor, and turned a near-pleading gaze on Shepard. "Things like this don't happen." 

"They do," said Nor. Her cracked voice made Miranda flinch, but she smiled as sweetly as her ruined, impossible face allowed. Sweetly enough for some of the shock in Miranda's face to disappear, and for her hands to unclench. Shepard could almost hear the meticulous procession of Miranda's thoughts reordering itself around this new development, and smiled to herself. Nice to know there was still some capacity for wonder inside Miranda's perfect brain. 

*** 

Garrus watched Tali disappear toward the elevator once the briefing ended, and followed her a few moments later. After, of course, one last backward glance at Shepard as she stood at the head of the table, still in her armor. 

He debated lingering until everyone else drifted away, but his last glance caught her in profile, unguarded and weary, and he decided he could be patient for a little longer. Long enough to give her time to collect herself, and wash off the remnants of Haestrom.  

Had he imagined the bright certainty in her gaze, when she pushed herself off the floor of the cavern? For one moment, Shepard had looked _happy_ , so damn happy all he could think of was her laughter, and the smile that greeted him every morning on Omega. She had been happy then, and so had he. 

Whatever he had seen in her eyes then faded, lost to the sharp edge of her will. If Shepard missed it, she didn't say. She folded her arms and stared ahead, and Garrus knew she didn't see the briefing room or any of the people in it. She saw the battlefield. 

That was Shepard's genius, he mused, flicking at his still-dead omnitool as he got into the elevator: that ability to see the war, where most only saw the immediate fight. She had seen it with Saren, and clothed a bare skeleton of guesswork and rumor with action, with _results_. Garrus didn't doubt — hadn't doubted — that what looked like irrational leaps to her squad had been Shepard sensing the edges of information, and fitting the pieces together by intuition alone, driving herself faster, harder, always with the lash of her will on her back. That focus on the war saved millions of lives. 

_But at what cost_? he thought.

What worried Garrus — no, what _hurt_ him — was that this Shepard, for all that she was warm and alive, and for all that she still went through the motions of visiting her crew, had forgotten how to be happy. In the cavern, there had been a quick, fugitive glimmer of happiness, of hope, but by the time they reached the light, it had disappeared. Exhaustion replaced it, and that keen-edged will that never broke or faltered. 

In his heart, Garrus wanted very little. A chance to prove himself, a cause to serve, and a solid circle of trust. A steady rifle and a good sniper's perch. He'd had all of that on Omega, and more: he'd had his squad, and what he had felt for them went beyond trust. They had been family. They were _still_ family, even if they were gone. 

And Shepard, always Shepard, always within reach even if he couldn't see her, pale-eyed and watchful. She hadn't been soft, even in her sweetest moments, but her sharp edges hadn't been wielded quite so easily, or fiercely. The woman who had come for him three months ago was not the woman who shared two secret years with him; she was brittle and cold, and bleak, so bleak. He almost didn't recognize her, not even when the wry turns of her personality showed through. 

This Shepard, Garrus realized, cold in spite of the heat still soaked through his armor, saw nothing _but_ the battlefield.

_Except for Ilium_. She had seen _him_ well enough then. She had seen _them_ , as they had been: _happy_. 

The elevator doors whisked open, and he walked into an empty mess hall. He took one look at the doors to the battery, and turned away with a shake of his head. Instead, he pulled a ration pack and a water bottle from the stores and sat down to eat. _Remember to stay hydrated_ , he told himself, mock-stern, and that reminded him of Therum: heat and stone and Tali's devilish, delighted laugh as she taught Shepard a particularly vicious hack to use against the geth. 

_Tali._  

Waiting in the mess was a better use of his time than running the numbers again; Tali would have someone waiting for her when she came out of Medbay. She would need a familiar face, on this Cerberus ship. 

The rations curdled in his mouth, and he shoved the rest of the pack away. _Cerberus_. Oh, everyone was kind, on the surface, polite and respectful too, but Garrus never left the battery without feeling like he had a target on his back. He remembered Cerberus. He remembered _all_ of it, and even if those were rogue factions, like Miranda claimed, he wouldn't trust the organization that birthed them. 

As if thoughts of Cerberus summoned her, the doors to Miranda's office opened and spat out the woman herself. She didn't spare Garrus a look as she strode toward the elevator, but the single glimpse he caught of her face made him appreciate his functional invisibility. He'd heard of faces looking stormy before, and chalked it up to human hyperbole, but Miranda's expression defined _thunderous_. Whoever had managed to make themselves the focus of that fury deserved to be pitied, unless that person was Shepard, and then Garrus pitied Miranda. He'd seen Shepard handle tempers before, with varying degrees of patience — and didn't doubt she'd have any trouble handling Miranda's. 

The thought of Miranda coming up against the solid wall of Shepard's sarcasm made him chuckle, the sound low and pleased in the dim mess, and he leaned back in his chair. He should shower soon, maybe try for a few hours' of sleep, and check in with Tali in the morning. 

And then, maybe, he'd try to talk to Shepard. _Really_ talk, no more running around what they had shared. Seeing her flat on her back, fingers peeling open her mouth, and then with blood spattered down her face and chest, had crystallized the one thing he hadn't let himself admit: he wanted her, so badly his throat ached, and if that meant nudging the game along, then he'd nudge. 

Who knew how much time they would have, with the Collectors to fight, and all the new horrors they had uncovered on Haestrom? Garrus knew it couldn't be long. 

_Amazing what near-death experiences will do to good intentions_ , he thought, squeezing the bottle in his fist. The sound of crinkling plastic nearly covered the Medbay door hissing open. 

"Garrus? You're here?" 

He looked up to see Tali standing on the other side of the table, shoulders slumped and rounded with exhaustion. He offered her a smile. 

"Figured you'd want to see a friendly face when you got out of there." He nodded at the medbay, where the dull steel privacy curtains blocked the view inside. "Any word?" 

Tali sighed, and fell heavily into a chair on the other side of the table. "Karsha is fine, just a concussion, Kal and Mikkit need to get back to the flotilla as soon as possible. Dr. Chakwas is doing everything she can, but they need fleet doctors to deal with their infections." 

"Shepard will get them there," said Garrus on reflex, surprising himself with how easily the old confidence came through in his subvocals. "I'm sorry about the rest of your team," he added, letting the confidence warm and soften into sympathy. _No one on this ship's knows more about what she's going through_ , he thought to himself, and the names of his squad crowded into his mouth. _Butler-Erash-Vortash-Monteague-Ripper-Mierin-Melanis-Grundan-Krul-Sensat-Weaver-no-Anna._

"They knew the risks when they volunteered _,_ " said Tali, not looking at him. She laughed tonelessly. "Do I sound like I believe that yet?" 

_No_ , Garrus thought, but didn't say. He knew better. "It wasn't your fault," he told her, because he meant it, because it was true. 

Tali laughed again. "Thanks for trying, Garrus, but that doesn't help. They were my responsibility. My team." Her voice trembled. "They weren't fighters, but they tried — they got me to the observatory. I should have been with them." Tali's hands tightened on the edge of the table, and Garrus' knuckles ached in sympathy. "I don't even know if what we got was worth it." 

Garrus heard himself speaking, and felt his jaw moving, but the words didn't seem to come from his mouth. "Don't second-guess yourself," said his voice. "You did your best. Put the blame where it deserves, with the geth." _And with whatever else was on Haestrom with them._

Tali swore under her breath, too long for his translator to catch. "I should have been there," she whispered. " _Keelah_ , I should have —it's all so mixed up in my head. I don't know what we saw down there, but I should have been with my team, not _hiding._ " 

"Don't go there, Tali." Garrus reached across the table and squeezed her shoulder. Just a brief touch, cold comfort, but Garrus knew that road, knew that grief, and if he could spare Tali any of it, he would. "You saved as many as you could." 

"It wasn't _enough_ ," Tali hissed, her voice thick with tears. 

_No,_ thought Garrus. _It never is._

He squeezed her shoulder again, at a loss for anything else to say, but thankfully Tali seemed content with the touch, and his silence. 

"You know," she said, hesitantly, when the first storm of grief passed. "When I heard you and Shepard over the comms, I — I said to myself, _If anyone can get us out of this, it's Shepard_. Just like I did when we were chasing Saren. It was like nothing had changed. Shepard coming in to save everyone. Do you think she ever gets sick of it?" 

"For the sake of the galaxy, I hope not," Garrus said, surprised when Tali snorted a watery laugh, but not too surprised to join in. 

He made tea when their laughter faded, and watched with well-worn fascination as Tali went about the business of filtering the tea through her suit. Her suit was new, its colors bright compared to the patched, faded fabric he remembered from the _SR-1_ , but she still swore just as much as she adjusted settings on her omni-tool. 

"Don't," she said in warning. 

Garrus stifled his chuckle and tried to look innocent. "I wasn't going to say anything," he protested.

"No, but you were going to _laugh_ , Garrus. I haven't forgotten all your commentary from the _Normandy_." She paused, and cocked her head. "The first _Normandy_ ," she added darkly. 

"It's not that different." Garrus kept his voice light; now was not the time to dive into the subject of Cerberus, not when Tali needed a distraction from anger and misery. "The food is still awful." 

"Careful, Garrus," said Shepard's voice. Tali and Garrus sat up straight, just in time to see Shepard step around the corner. She didn't smile, but her eyes gleamed to match the tease in her voice. "I could pick up some turian military rations the next time we hit the Citadel, if you think what we've got now is bad." 

"Always ready to help me keep perspective, Shepard," he tossed back, warmed unexpectedly by her appearance. 

"You're welcome," she said, with a flash of a grin, and turned her gaze to Tali. "I was just coming down to check on you," she said, eyes kind, and Garrus' chest tightened. He knew that look, he knew what Shepard reserved it for, and he couldn't watch. As he stood, he heard Shepard murmuring an apology to Tali, something about Miranda keeping her away. When Tali's voice rose, sharp and aching, he didn't turn around, just listened for the rustle of fabric as Shepard moved in to comfort Tali through the second storm. 

*** 

Garrus never bothered locking the door to the main battery; only two people ever came in, besides him, and Chambers stopped visiting when she realized she would get nothing out of Garrus, no matter how sympathetic she was. 

And Shepard — Shepard only came once, leaving him to himself after that first visit. So when the door opened and let in a burst of cool air, he almost didn't believe Shepard came with it, even after he turned around and found her standing in the doorway. 

"Tali's back in Medbay," she said, stepping into the battery as if she came to visit every day, one easy step in front of the other. "The other quarians are stable, so maybe she'll actually get some sleep." 

"Maybe." Garrus didn't say he knew from experience how hard Tali would have to fight for any kind of rest, but the sidelong look Shepard gave him made it clear he didn't have to. _Shepard and Vakarian_. He'd missed this, the silent communications, the feeling of shared purpose. 

He'd missed _everything._  

Shepard leaned against a crate and folded her arms. "I know it sounds selfish, but I'm glad Tali's here. Even if she goes back to the flotilla, it feels right to have her here." She hummed, caught herself, and flashed Garrus a wry smile. "Now we just have to rescue Wrex and Liara from near-death and we'll have the squad back together. As together as it'll be." 

No Kaidan, then. Garrus ignored the sting — if he had come back for Shepard, why couldn't Kaidan — and finally met Shepard's gaze. She kept smiling, though her eyes were faraway and exhausted. 

"You look wrecked, Shepard," he said, not wanting her to leave, but hating the weary, grim set to her mouth. "You should get some sleep." 

"Too wired," she said, picking at her trousers. "I'd lie down and twenty different things would jump out at me as soon as I closed my eyes. Might as well keep you company, if you're planning on staying awake." She looked at him through dark, heavy lashes. "We should talk," she said, her voice low. 

Oh, they needed to talk, about so many things — but where to start? With Haestrom, or with Nor, or maybe even farther back, with Omega. When Garrus tried to find the words, any words, to keep the new-forged path between them clear, he couldn't find a syllable. He just wanted to stare at Shepard, and enjoy the quiet. He'd take her lead, if she wanted to talk, but he would be happy to watch, as long as she would let him. 

"But first," Shepard said, pushed to her feet, and tucked her hair behind her ears. She looked shy, and tired, but hopeful, almost too subtly to see. 

Garrus saw. He'd spent two years learning her face, her body, her mind, and if the Shepard standing in front of him wasn't the same Shepard he had fallen in love with, maybe it wasn't as great a loss as he'd feared. She remembered some of it, enough to trust him with what little she had left, and now she had brought him her hope. Her trust and hope were heady things, rarely glimpsed, and he had to pull his focus back to hear the rest of what she said. 

"I wanted to thank you for staying. I know that Cerberus isn't an ally you'd ever choose, and you know how I feel about them, but it means a lot that you stayed." She took his hand and fit her fingers around his, brushing his wrist with her thumb. Familiar, familiar touch. "Wouldn't want to do this without you." 

His neck flushed hot. _Of course I stayed_ , he thought, holding her gaze, aching, wanting, and so tired of distance. _Who else would I trust to have your six_? 

Shepard smiled at him. Not quite their smile, and her hand was warmer than he remembered, even through layers of fabric and armor, but they undid him. _So much for the game_ , he thought, even as he bent down, slowly enough to see Shepard's eyes go wide as she realized what he was doing. 

When Garrus let himself think about the good of Omega, he remembered the kissing most often. Not the sex, but the quiet moments before and after, how Shepard moved from gentle to greedy in the space of a heartbeat, and how warm her mouth was, the last part of her that felt alive. Her mouth was still warm, still soft, but now he felt her gasp as he pressed his mouth to hers, and smiled to himself. He'd managed to surprise her, and that was almost as sweet as the kiss itself. 

He pulled away, and smirked down at Shepard as she blinked, her cheeks pink under her sunburn. 

"That…" She licked her lips. "That was, uh, compatible." 

" _Compatible?_ " he said, amusement climbing through his subvocals. "Oh, Shepard. You have _no idea._ "

Shepard's mouth dropped open, and then she started to laugh, the implications forgotten for the moment, and tipped her face back up to his. 

"One more," she said, and Garrus couldn't think of a single reason to say no. 


	39. Chapter 39

Despite having come to the battery with a distinct agenda, and the determination to see it through, all of Shepard's good intentions evaporated the moment Garrus kissed her. 

 _Kissed_ her, without any hesitation. Shepard's kissing history was thorough rather than extensive, but she knew that kind of confidence only came from long practice. Very long practice; he knew just when to lift her chin with a knuckle, and how to fit the narrow plates of his mouth against her lips. Perfect aim, perfect execution. If she hadn't been left near breathless, Shepard might have applauded. The kiss was everything the past three months hadn't been: familiar, warm, gentle. This was how you kissed someone you loved, when their body was just as familiar to you as your own. 

 _He loved me_ , she thought, just as Garrus let out an appreciative sigh and pulled away. Only to a hand's-breadth, close enough for her to feel the warmth rolling off him. She wrestled with the unfamiliar urge to pout — certainly _one_ more kiss couldn't hurt, since they'd already risked two — but managed to restrain herself. The sharp way Garrus watched her face, longing warring with control, made her take a step back. He wanted her to remember Omega; how many of his self-imposed rules had he needed to break to give in even this much? Better to put the boundaries back up herself, rather than letting him do it alone. 

Still, one more — 

 _Down, girl_ , Shepard told herself. She reached up to touch her mouth, and forced her hand down. 

"So," she said, flushing all over again when speaking made her too aware of how warm her lips felt, how heavy and well-kissed. _Lots of practice._

"So," Garrus rumbled, and smirked down at her with his mandibles flared wide. 

"I actually had a reason for coming in here," she said. To be on the safe side, she took another step back, so their joined hands were the only point of connection. Garrus wasn't the only one who could steal kisses, and it would only take one more for want to overpower priorities. Time to be soldiers again. 

"Really," Garrus deadpanned. 

" _Really_." Shepard took another step back and unwound her fingers from his. Not without regret, but she had meant it when she said _we should talk_. She had a promise to keep: to take everything, the good and the bad, and even if she wanted to pout over the lost possibility of a kiss, she couldn't. "It's a matter of where to start," she added. When her legs bumped against a crate, she half-turned and climbed on top of it, crossing her legs and cupping her knees in her hands. Garrus watched her, and it gave her a pang, deep beneath her ribs, to watch the warm hunger in his gaze sharpen to a hunter's wariness. 

"You sure Miranda won't come looking for you?" he asked. "I'm sure you two have a lot to talk about, after Haestrom." 

Well, he'd given her an opening, right to the topic she least looked forward to discussing. He just didn't know it. "Funny you should mention Miranda," she said, keeping her voice light, ignoring how the muscles in her shoulders went taut with the expectation of an argument. "She came to see me about an hour ago." 

"I saw her leaving." Garrus coughed politely. Shepard ducked her head. She remembered _that_ tell from the _SR-1_ , but was it really a tell when Garrus clearly had no intention of really hiding his laughter. "Looked like she was about to tear you a new one." 

"Oh, she tried." Shepard briefly considered easing into the conversation, treating Garrus more gently than she had Miranda, and discarded the idea. He wouldn't appreciate the idea of being coddled. "But then it occurred to me — Miranda pointed it out, actually — that she can't do her job if she didn't know all the facts." 

Garrus' face tightened. "Shepard, you didn't." When she nodded, not breaking his gaze, he swore and turned to his console. "Dammit, why would you do that?" 

"Because she was right, Garrus," said Shepard. "Her job is to make sure this mission succeeds. It's in her best interest — and ours — if she knows what's going on. What if we walk into another Haestrom?"

"And telling her about how you — dammit, Shepard." Garrus rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. "She must have thought you were crazy," he murmured, still staring at his console. 

Shepard steeled herself. Oh, Garrus was going to _hate_ this. She should have stolen that last kiss, game or not, because the odds were good he wouldn't want to be in the same room with her after she told him the rest. "She did," Shepard said, and some clue in her voice, audible only to Garrus, gave her away. He twitched, already shaking his head before she could finish. "But then I deployed the nuclear option." 

"Spirits." Garrus inhaled with a hiss, still shaking his head. "You didn't," he said again, his shoulders sagging. 

"I did." Another wave of exhaustion hit her, along with an echo of the poisonous headache. She forced herself to keep talking, blinking through the pain. "I don't know how this all ties up with the Reapers, Garrus — hell, we don't even know how the _Collectors_ do. But doesn't it make sense to have as many allies as we can get? If we're going in blind, maybe another few set of eyes —" 

"Miranda isn't an ally," said Garrus. He pushed away from the console, but instead of facing her, swung his head to stare at the door. "She's Cerberus, Shepard. You can't trust her." 

"I want to," Shepard said, before she could stop herself. When Garrus looked at her, looking as startled as she felt by the admission, she pushed herself to keep going. All or nothing seemed to be the evening's theme. "I know how messed up that sounds. She _is_ Cerberus, but I can't help hoping she'll want to be more. Something better." 

"A _friend_?" Garrus sneered. He shook his head. "Shepard, that was — I'm sorry." He sighed, rubbing his forehead again. "You've spent more time with her than I have. I said I trusted you, and I'm not doing a very good job of showing it. But _Cerberus_ , Shepard. You remember what they did." 

A fresh burst of exhaustion, spiked with frustration, pushed the words out of her mouth before she knew that she had spoken. "Don't worry, I didn't forget _everything_." Her hands flew to her mouth, too late to save the moment. "Oh, Jesus, shit, I'm sorry. Garrus, that was —" 

He waved away her apology, even as his mandibles drew even tighter to his face. "It's fine," he said, and the lie couldn't have been more obvious. 

"It's not," she said, ready to push to her feet and capture his hands in hers, to apologize to his face, but she stayed where she was when he took a few steps away from her. "We've been over this, Garrus," she said, after he sat down on his own crate, half a room and two years away. 

"What Cerberus did was monstrous. Criminal. _Disgusting._ Miranda claims she didn't know about any of it, and that rogue factions were responsible for what we found. But…" 

"…but you don't believe her," Garrus finished for her. 

Shepard bit her lip. She tasted a hint of blood, and ran her tongue over the sore spot as she thought over her answer. "I believe that she didn't know," she said slowly, "and that _she_ believes the rogue factions story. I think I can read Miranda well enough to tell when she's hiding something from me." She huffed a dry, humorless laugh. "Some kind of osmosis, maybe."

Garrus laughed too, just as mirthlessly. "So where is Miranda? Back in her office?" 

"Not exactly." The urge to fidget, like she'd been caught being very, very naughty — and in a sense, Shepard supposed she had — came on strong, and didn't fade. Could Garrus read her guilt in her face? And was it even guilt that she was feeling? "She's up in my cabin," she said. "With Nor." 

"With." Garrus' expression tried to do several things at once, and failed to settle on any one of them. He simply looked blank, as if Shepard's confession had wiped all the words out of his head. The only other time she had seen him so flummoxed was when they confronted the Thorian, and she could hear the astonished echo of his voice, even now: _This was not in my training manual._

Poor Garrus. Poor _all of them_. No training manual existed for this, and whatever rules Nor played by didn't apply to them. They had to figure it all out on instinct and intuition. 

That, at least, hadn't changed from the days of chasing Saren. And just like those days, Garrus recovered almost immediately. He cocked his head at her, with a sigh that seemed to rise from the soles of his feet. 

"Just so I have all the information," he said, in his careful investigator's voice, "you told Miranda you spent two years as a ghost, and that spirits are _real_ , then you introduced her to one?" 

"That about covers it." Shepard leaned back against the wall and waited for the explosion. 

When it came, it was much softer than she expected, barely an explosion at all. Garrus seemed to be gathering himself to flare out, maybe even to shout, but in the end he just slumped back into his armor with one more sigh. 

"You might be crazy, Shepard," he murmured. 

She looked down at her hands. "It's been said before." _Maybe I have to be a little crazy to fight this war,_ she thought. 

 _No, maybe I have to be a little crazy to still think I can_ win _._

"So you just…left Miranda up there with that thing. In your cabin." 

Shepard brushed her hair back behind her ears. "She has a name, Garrus." 

Garrus made a dark noise far back in his throat, no translation needed. Disgust, plain and simple, rolled off him in waves. "It's going to take more than a name to make me forget what happened on Omega. What that woman didn't do." 

"Tell me," said Shepard. She didn't remind him of his assertion of trust back on Haestrom, and how he could let that trust ease his doubts; she knew too well how grief shadowed everything, until even trust became murky as storm-churned water. The rules of the game had been relaxed once tonight, for pleasure. Now, they needed to be bent for truth. For memory. "What happened? I've tried to remember, but I'm…going to need your help." 

He gave her a bleak look, the _why can't this be easier_ in his gaze sharp enough to draw blood. 

"She knew what was coming. She didn't warn us." 

"The mercs?" At Garrus' nod, Shepard closed her eyes. The mercs, the dead squad. Ten bodies, two rows. "And Sidonis." 

"And Sidonis," Garrus agreed, heavily, too tired for anger. 

Shepard could have defended Nor easily. She felt the words on the tip of her tongue: _she might not have known, there are rules she has to obey, she might not have been able to tell you._ In the face of Garrus' loss, they were flimsy justifications, and they had no place in this room. Garrus' _why_ deserved more than excuses. 

And coming from her, the one who left, justifications would be worse than a lack of remorse. She had disappeared and forgotten, and left him to carry it alone. _I couldn't help it_ , she thought, in her plaintive voice _,_ but that was an excuse, too. She had the memories, somewhere, still locked in ice. It could only be her fault if she couldn't thaw them faster. 

"What convinced you she wasn't some kind of…monster?" Garrus asked. "Without remembering?" 

Finally, a question with an answer within her reach. "I did at first," said Shepard. "I tried to pull a gun on her. A lot of good that would have done me. She told me to go to Omega. And to hurry." 

Garrus shifted, brow plates raised.

"Yeah. But it wasn't till Alchera that I started to think…maybe this wasn't such a bad thing. She helped me remember. Like she was kick-starting my brain." 

_I am sorry. You will not enjoy this._

"It wasn't pleasant, but…she was here to help. As much as she's allowed." 

"And you left her in your cabin with Miranda." A belated stroke of fear crossed Garrus' face. 

Shepard knew what he was going to ask before he opened his mouth. "Shepard, your cabin —" 

"It's good and bugged," Shepard replied. "But our resident AI seems to think this is all…interesting, so she won't be passing along anything to the Illusive Man so long as I don't head for the kind of crazy that threatens the mission." 

Garrus stared at her. "Shepard, you —" He started to laugh, reluctantly at first, and then warming to a real laugh, light and surprised. "You realize," he said, still laughing, "that you really are crazy, right? And damn lucky, too." 

Lucky? Shepard bit back a retort — she didn't feel lucky. What she felt was _tired_ , the kind that no sleep could fully erase, and sore, and sunburned. Oh, and guilty, too, and overwhelmed, with a side of scared-shitless. No, lucky was the one thing she definitely did _not_ feel. 

 _But I came back_. _I got another chance to keep fighting._ She smiled, started by the warmth growing in her chest. Not a golden warmth, she wasn't _that_ lucky, but close enough. _I get another chance for all of this._

"We're going to need luck, where we're going." 

Garrus stood. "And guns. Big damn guns." He took two steps toward her, and she started to rise herself, but paused with one foot on the floor when he stopped. "Shepard," he said, low and urgent. "You didn't tell Miranda _everything_ , did you?" 

She could have teased him, told him _why yes, Garrus, of course I did_ , and basked in his shudders until laughing and admitting that no, there were some things she had kept to herself, but then she saw his hands. Clenched like two knots of steel at his waist. Somehow, she had missed the sound of metal scraping against metal, but the thought of teasing him blew apart at the sight of his hands. His fists, clenched against whatever attack came next. 

"No," she told him. She pushed off the crate and closed the distance, secretly too pleased for words when he relaxed as she got into his personal space. Being jammed up against him with inches to spare felt right, so she risked a little more and pressed her hands to his chest. His heartbeat couldn't travel though his layers of armor, so she imagined it. "That's for us. No one else gets it, unless we agree they should." 

"EDI knows," he said. Only a moment's hesitation passed before he clasped her wrists, stroking along the inside of her arms with his thumbs. "I wonder if this counts as _interesting_ enough to keep quiet." 

"I don't know," said Shepard, with a wayward smile. "Is it, EDI?" She kept her gaze locked with Garrus', her smile growing when he blinked up at the ceiling as EDI replied. 

"My directives are clear, Commander. As long as it does not threaten your effectiveness or the success of the mission, I am not required to report this situation to either Operative Lawson or the Illusive Man." A pause. "I find the concept of existence after a biological unit has ceased to function to be intriguing, though improbable."

"In other words, you're not going to talk about my…situation with Officer Vakarian?" Shepard raised an eyebrow.

"No, Commander. Though you should be aware that Operative Lawson's discussion in your cabin has ended, and there is a high probability that she knows your location." Another pause, and Shepard had a fleeting impression of _amusement_ coloring EDI's next few words. "I have shared that information with her." 

Shepard rolled her eyes, but the thought that EDI wasn't quite as shackled as Cerberus wanted to believe would have to wait for another time, when she had the moment to spare to decide if she should be alarmed or not. 

"Want to see if my luck holds?" she asked Garrus. "Miranda's going to have _a lot_ to say." 

"Oh, I'm sure," Garrus said, with a touch of a grin. "Wouldn't want to miss this." The grin stayed in place as he bent down to rest his forehead against Shepard's. She didn't sigh, and no crack shot through the last of the ice in her head, but she felt a catch, a hook through an eye, and a thread of certainty. This had been theirs too, this touch, just as familiar, as _compatible_ , as the kisses. Shepard used the last few seconds before Miranda keyed the battery door open to hold that certainty close, like a cat's cradle around her fingers.

*** 

Garrus let his forehead rest against Shepard's until he heard the door begin to hiss open, then took a handful of reluctant steps away from her to fix his attention on his console. Shepard slouched against the railing with a sigh. Other than the hot streaks of her sunburn, she stayed pale as always, without a flush to give her away. _Nothing_ gave her away, until she tilted her head back and he caught the fugitive glitter in her eyes — too bright for the low lights of the battery alone to have caused it. 

For her part, she looked completely relaxed, and he hoped his posture matched hers, that none of his inner heat translated into his expression. Then again, he doubted turian facial expressions and their accompanying moods figured heavily into Cerberus' educational plans. 

 _Don't underestimate Miranda. Not much gets by her,_ he told himself, as the woman stepped into the battery. She had a blank expression to rival Shepard's, though Shepard's had none of Miranda's arrogance. Always that undefinable trace of haughtiness, like the thulium in his plates. 

It set his teeth on edge as Miranda's cold, sea-colored gaze swept over him. She didn't sneer, though Garrus watched her closely as she finished inspecting him and turned to face Shepard. 

"Shepard," Miranda began, and stopped before she said anything more, shaking her head. 

In the silence that followed, Garrus watched Miranda struggling for what to say, and felt an odd mixture of pleasure and pity. Of course he got a great deal of satisfaction from watching Miranda knocked so off-balance, with her jaw working uselessly and a slow flush flowing into her cheeks. The pity surprised him, because he pitied her for the same sets of reasons that made him want to laugh, low and angry, at her discomfort. He _knew_ , from brutal, bloody experience, how badly Shepard's nuclear option could throw off a person — and he hadn't needed to face that alone. Watching Miranda grope for words stung Garrus, like a burr under his heel. Shepard’s decision to confront Miranda with her fistfuls of secrets had been expedient, and probably for the best, but it had been cruel, too.

Maybe five seconds passed before Shepard dove in after Miranda, but with the weight of knowledge under the silence, they seemed like days, dry and airless days. 

"Is this a conversation you'd like to have in private, Miranda?" asked Shepard, her voice hovering at the limit of being gentle. "I'd be happy to —" 

"No, Shepard," Miranda interrupted, finding her voice at last. Garrus raised his browplates, surprised at even the small breach of protocol. Miranda never wavered from polite subordination; an interruption was a larger tell than he ever expected to see from her. He risked a glance at Shepard. She met his eyes for a moment, one eyebrow arching before she turned back to Miranda. 

"What I mean to say --," Miranda began, then paused to draw a sharp breath in through her nose. "I would like to speak to Officer Vakarian." 

Garrus allowed himself a moment of pride; he didn't blink, or twitch, or give away his surprise in any of a hundred other little responses to Miranda's statement, with its implicit caveat of speaking to him _alone_. There could only be one question she wanted to ask, the same question he himself would ask in her position, though perhaps not so politely: _is Shepard crazy?_  

 _For a given value of crazy,_ he thought, and nearly gave himself away by laughing. 

He was so occupied with hiding his own reaction that he missed Shepard's; if she blinked, or twitched, or arched an eyebrow, he didn't see it. Garrus only saw her stand up straight, and smooth her tunic over her thighs.

"I'll check on our quarian guests," Shepard said, lightly. If Miranda's request offended her, she gave no sign, and if Garrus didn't remember her disastrous performance at Skyllian Five on the _SR-1_ , he'd have been stunned by her poker face. "Then I'll be doing my rounds." At the door, she looked over her shoulder at Miranda. "Evening briefing at 2100 hours." 

The message couldn't have been clearer: _say what you want, question me if you must, but I am still Commander here_.

Miranda nodded, a curt bob of her head. "Of course, Commander." 

Garrus hoped to catch Shepard's eye before she walked out the door, but she left without another backwards look. When the door hissed closed, Miranda hesitated only a moment before facing him, the flush already gone from her cheeks. 

 _Here's the right hand of the Illusive Man_ , Garrus thought, squaring his shoulders and returning Miranda's stare. He braced himself for the question, already sure of his answer. 

_Yes, Shepard is crazy. Why do you think she won against Sovereign? Isn't that why you brought her back?_

He felt absurdly glad, when Miranda's icy stare pinned him in place, her mouth a hard line, that Shepard had held back the most private details of her return. Her _first_ return, the one he still, reluctantly, thought of as the miracle. It made him sick, deep in his gut, to know that this woman's fingerprints were all over Shepard — _inside_ Shepard; that while he and Shepard had found peace, and rest, and hunger, Miranda had been rebuilding Shepard. It felt like a theft, like Miranda had broken down the doors of the base and stolen Shepard while he slept. Ridiculous, petty, and selfish — hadn't Miranda brought Shepard back, and hadn't Shepard saved him? 

 _Too late_ , shouted the voice of his guilt, like a child chanting nonsense. _It was all too late._

Garrus couldn't hate Miranda, but not from lack of trying. He would never trust her, never believe her. Respect and a steady arm, that was all he owed her. 

He certainly didn't owe her the favor of beginning the conversation. So he waited out her silence as she inspected him, a slight frown creasing her forehead, ready for the question. 

Miranda tilted her head back to meet his gaze. The chilly appraisal in her eyes galled him, and the old, Omega instincts rolled over, sluggishly, like beasts stirring from hibernation. If someone had looked at him like that when he was Archangel, obviously cataloging possible weak spots in his armor, holes in his defenses, what would he have done? 

It didn't matter. Archangel was gone. Archangel was nothing more than rumor. 

 _I'm just Garrus Vakarian now_ , he thought, and resignation settled over him, not grief. Maybe this was how one dealt with so much loss: you accepted the reduction, the slow encroachment of empty space on what had been warm and alive, and hardened yourself for when it happened again. 

Miranda finally looked away, her eyes drifting to the far end of the battery. "I assume Shepard told you what she just told me," she began, and glanced back at him. 

 _Here it comes_ , he thought, _the question_. "She did," he replied, with no subvocals. To a turian, the lack would have been a clear sign of omission — almost an insult. Petty to get his shots in like that — but Garrus could afford to be petty now, if he was just himself. 

Miranda nodded. She crossed her arms across her chest, and gave him another stare, more measuring than the first. 

"You've seen that woman -- _Nor._ Haven't you?" she asked. "Shepard wouldn't have risked letting us talk if there was a chance that any of this was a lie." 

"Shepard doesn't lie," Garrus said, on reflex. 

The sound that left Miranda's mouth only bore a passing resemblance to a laugh, but the smile that went with it surprised Garrus — the smile was, for lack of a better term, almost _fond_ , if a little rueful. "No, she doesn't. However, her definition of _not lying_ doesn't exactly intersect with _telling the truth_." 

Garrus had no reply to that; he, and the rest of the _SR-1_ squad, learned to accept the way Shepard parceled out pieces of herself like rewards for jobs well done, duties performed admirably. If information touched on the personal, she guarded it viciously. He remembered the graze of shock when he found out Hackett had known Shepard when she was a child — and the anger at Hackett's constant requests for aid that he'd felt on the heels of that realization. Shepard never refused Hackett, never failed him — hell, she had never _complained_ , but Garrus hadn't been as fluent in the tiny changes in her voice and expression then. Had he missed regret, or resentment? 

And then, there were the thresher maws, on Nepheron and Trebin and half a dozen other worlds, and every time, there had been the split-second _nothing_ in Shepard's gaze before she shouted orders. Hell, the squad even had to finish one off on foot when acid wrecked the grenade launcher, and she hadn't hesitated. He thought Akuze had been behind her, mourned and sealed away, out of reach. 

 _Not out of reach_ , he thought, barely noticing as he clenched his fists. That _thing_ on Haestrom had shown him his last, stumbling walk through the base, and it had shown Shepard Akuze. 

He should have — someone should have _asked_. 

"I've seen her," he said, trying not to let his disgust leak into his voice. _Trust Shepard._ "Not here, but on Omega, and on Haestrom." 

Miranda cut him off before he could go on, with a hiss and a shake of her head. " _Dammit_ , Shepard," she ground out. The flush had begun to creep back into her cheeks, a blotchy, angry crimson. "There are things I _must_ know, and withholding information —" 

"Before you blame Shepard for all of this," Garrus snapped. "See it from her side. It sounds crazy, even now. Even after what you've seen." He leaned back against his console and folded his arms against his chest. "In a way, Shepard was doing you a favor." 

"Oh?" Miranda smirked at him, completely without humor. "And how did you come to that conclusion?" 

"If she had mentioned a word of this to you before today, you'd have reported it all to the Illusive Man. Shepard, the savior of mankind, hallucinating spirits and thinking she'd been a ghost." He swallowed, his voice momentarily gone. It seemed crazy to him, even with Shepard's heat still gathered in his hands, on his mouth. But she had been there, all two years of it. He remembered everything. "And then you'd be back where you started," he said, once he found his voice once more. If the words came out of his mouth rough and a little unsteady, Miranda didn't notice, or didn't care enough to comment. "Without a savior, and with a lunatic to deal with instead. She gave you what you needed — Commander Shepard." 

"She's reckless," Miranda snapped. "Withholding that information could have gotten people killed."

"And going up against the Collectors without her would have ended this war before it got started." Garrus cocked his head at Miranda. He pitied her, against his will, against all instinct; Shepard's secrets had kept unnecessary distance between them, and he couldn't help a selfish resentment at that but — 

— but he hadn't asked. 

"What the hell was she thinking?" Miranda asked in an undertone. "What the bloody hell —" 

Inspired, Garrus cut across Miranda, raising his voice above hers. "Do you trust Shepard?" he asked.

Miranda gaped at him, though Garrus didn't know if it was for the question itself, or for the fact that he had interrupted her. "Do you?" he asked, a little more forcefully than before. 

"Not until after Ilium," said Miranda, slowly, as if she might have to drag the words out by hand. "She — helped, with Oriana. No hidden costs. No _favors._ She just…did." Miranda blinked. "She told me that was what she had done with Jack. I didn't believe her, and then…" She tossed her head again, and gave Garrus the fond, rueful smile that wasn't meant for him. "I should have listened." Miranda sighed. 

"It seems I've missed an opportunity," she said, dusting off her hands. Her voice had regained its polish, every trace of hesitation gone. Garrus met her gaze, expecting to meet the full force of Miranda's arrogance and disdain, and found — something warmer. Something like — 

_Understanding._

"What?" he asked, inwardly cursing for sounding like an idiot. The word echoed in the battery, his own voice pressing against his ears. _What? What? What?_

"We share an…unusual perspective," Miranda went on. She walked slowly to the other side of the battery, trailing gloved fingers along the railing. "Did Shepard tell you what happened when she woke up on Lazarus Station?" Without waiting for Garrus' response, she kept talking, her fingers moving restlessly over the railing. "One of the techs sabotaged the mechs. Set them on the project staff, to hunt them down like animals." She drew in another sharp breath through her nose. " _My_ project staff," she added, and let her words hang in the air, like a thin tracery of smoke. 

Garrus closed his eyes, the unending litany rising in the back of his mind. 

_Butler-Sensat-Ripper-Monteague-Vortash-Mierin-Erash-Melanis-Grundan-Krul-Weaver-no-Anna —_

"She’s a perverse comfort," said Miranda. "Nor, that is. If she is the _Normandy's…spirit_ , then it follows that the Lazarus Project had one as well. It goes against type for me to say this, but I find myself reassured that something of them remains." She shrugged, her face as blank as the bulkhead behind her. "It's not logical, but I'm finding that little to do with Shepard is."

Garrus nodded wordlessly, turning the words _perverse comfort_ over in his head, Miranda fading from his circle of attention. He'd been so concerned with opposing Nor, and been so offended by her existence and her place in Shepard's circle, that he'd never considered this possibility: that something more of his squad remained than what was inside his skull. His, and Shepard's, he reminded himself, and the thought was enough to make him smile. What shape would the squad's spirit take, if it still lingered? 

He heard the door open, and Miranda's heels clicking away. _Perverse comfort_ , he thought _. No, the only part that's perverse is that it took Cerberus to give me the idea, when I should have seen it all along. Something's still here. It's not all gone._

Maybe Monteague’s foul mouth stayed, or Melanis' way of talking in her sleep. Sensat’s appetite, or Weaver’s dirty hands. _Anna’s_ dirty hands, and her dirtier laugh. Butler, singing quietly on watch. 

Sidonis. Slippery, lying Sidonis, asking to stay with Garrus, to keep fighting. 

 _No_. Garrus turned his back to Sidonis’ memory, biting his tongue to hold back a hiss.  The bastard had no place in the squad’s spirit; he had no _right_ to help shape what he had destroyed. Garrus would burn him out; every last memory of his worthless life would be erased, forgotten, annihilated, and justice served. His heart and fists clenched at the thought, at the idea that he could leave things a little _brighter._ Wasn’t that all he had wanted to do as Archangel? Sidonis had taken even that from him, from _all_ of them. 

He shook his head, turning his back on thoughts of betrayal and justice. Time enough for them, and for Sidonis, later.

Time enough to hunt, later. 


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, _so_ many apologies for the long wait for this chapter. You are all so lovely for being so patient, and so interested in this story, and I can't thank you all enough. 
> 
> Here's to life cooperating, and to a regular posting schedule. 
> 
> _And_ to the last bit of quiet our heroes will get for a very long time.

Three days ago, finding Miranda's sterile, efficient office comforting might have struck Shepard as perverse. Now she had a new baseline for _perverse_ , and she felt closer to relaxed than she had thought possible as they ended their evening meeting. 

"Anything else, Miranda?" Shepard asked, once they had finished going through the next tier of dossiers. No one worth recruiting, no one worth the time. Whoever made up the squad now would be who went with her through the Omega-4 relay, and there'd be no chance for a do-over if she hadn't chosen wisely. _Keep a good thought_ , she grumbled at herself, and sat back in her chair as she waited for Miranda's response. 

Miranda didn't betray any nerves or hesitate; she took the last datapad from Shepard's hand and placed it neatly on top of the pile. "One thing, Commander," she said coolly, without a blink as she met Shepard's gaze. "You've lost almost nine pounds since we began the mission, and though Gardner assures me he's done all in his power to keep you fed, you're quite skillful at avoiding him." 

"That's it?" Shepard burst out, a helpless disappointment coloring her words. She winced and straightened her spine; no matter how well she usually managed to resist a certain vindictive streak in her nature, she hadn't quite been able to stop herself from anticipating seeing Miranda's _sang froid_ shattered. After all, Shepard had left her XO in a room with a _spirit_. A damn unnerving one, too. Who wouldn't be thrown off? 

Apparently, Miranda Lawson would not. 

At Shepard's comment, Miranda arched an eyebrow and shrugged. "Were you expecting something else, Shepard?" 

 _No_ , Shepard thought. _But I hoped you'd take a little longer to recover. Maybe I'm an asshole, but it'd make me feel better about freaking out._ "Not particularly," she replied, more graciously than she felt. "Well, in the interest of total accuracy, yes, I was. I threw you a bit of a curve earlier. I figured you'd have something to say about that." 

"Why, Shepard," said Miranda, as dry as dust. "I hadn't thought _total accuracy_ concerned you much." 

Shepard nearly huffed — _nearly_ — but decided to smile instead. A better tactical choice than admitting she'd hoped that someone handled Nor's appearance as badly as she had — and, considering what a wrench she'd thrown into her not-quite-friendship with Miranda, a smile was a better piece offering. 

The wrench had, at the time, seemed like her best option. 

"I probably deserved that," she said, not missing the wry tilt of Miranda's head that very clearly said _definitely_ , and smiled a little wider. "It seems like you managed to come through the experience unscathed," she added, with a note of wistful envy that she couldn't hide. "I'm sorry if it was…painful, for you." She didn't ask what Nor had shown to Miranda; in truth, she had no interest in knowing. Too many fingerprints still rested on her own bones and muscles for her to want to bully her way into Miranda's privacy.

"Painful?" Miranda frowned, leaning on her clasped hands. "No, I wouldn't call it _painful_ , Shepard, though having one's assumptions overturned so completely isn't _pleasant_ , either." Her mouth crooked to one side. "I wish you had informed me. You took a great risk, Shepard, with yourself and with the mission. We still don't know anything quantifiable about these _spirits,_ nor how — or _if_ — they fit in with the Collectors." She shook her head, faint, frustrated lines creasing her smooth brow. "We don't even know if they're allies. And the Sarcophagus — whatever that was, it's dead rock now. We know _nothing_ , Shepard, just that they exist." 

"So it's all just one more variable?" Shepard sighed. "Wish I could see it that way." 

"If what you've told me is true, your experiences are considerably more personal than mine," Miranda said, all too reasonably. "Though I must admit, Shepard, I find the idea of you as a ghost implausible — and ridiculous." 

"But not _impossible_ ," Shepard added, slyly, and Miranda turned her head to hide a smile. _Ah, victory,_ Shepard thought, fighting a smile of her own. 

"No, not _impossible_ , if you'd like to play semantics." 

However calmly spoken and precisely phrased, Shepard still knew a reproach when she heard one, and hid the way it stung her with decisive lightness in her own voice. "Come on, Miranda," she said. "I didn't lie to you." 

"Not directly. Withholding information, _omitting_ information completely — that you'll do, without a qualm." Miranda lifted her eyes to Shepard's, a faint, hurt downward curve to her mouth. "I'm not your enemy," she said. "I never have been. The mission was my priority in resurrecting you, but I've never wished you harm."

"There's a big difference between not being an enemy and being an ally, if we're playing semantics," Shepard replied, with an airy flick of her hand that earned her another raised eyebrow — and a slight smile — from Miranda. "Besides, just how well would you have taken it two months ago, if I walked into your office and told you what I said five hours ago?" 

The minute flicker of Miranda's eyelids was all the answer Shepard needed. "Thought so," she said. "I don't blame you for doubting me. Just — if I was lying about this, what would I stand to gain?" 

"A split from Cerberus," Miranda said instantly. "The freedom to go running back to the Alliance." 

"Right." Shepard snorted. "I thought you hacked the Council's channels, Miranda. You should know they're not too keen to have me back." 

"Then the ability to run this mission the way you want, without oversight." 

"Come on, Miranda. Even I have to admit I've been granted an impressive amount of leeway."She stood and brushed off her tunic. "I stand to gain nothing by lying about being a —" 

The word stuck in her throat. 

"— a ghost." 

There. It was said; the thorns pulled from her throat. _It's not a secret anymore,_ she thought. _Secrets are secrets so long as only one person knows. I know it, Garrus knows it, Miranda knows it. Only a matter of time until the rest of the galaxy knows._

Shepard hoped that wouldn't be a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

"That's the one thing I keep coming back to." Miranda rose as well, and walked around her desk to sink into one of the chairs facing her viewport. "You have everything to lose by lying. All the loyalty you've managed to collect, your resources, your crew, your _ship_ — all of it gone. I can't see you risking that, or the mission. And," she added, looking up as Shepard sat down in the empty chair, "Officer Vakarian was quite convincing. Everything sounded so _plausible_ during my conversation with him. He's a compelling speaker when he chooses to be. Small wonder he was able to cause such chaos on Omega. Seems like he learned those lessons at your side." 

"You have no idea," said Shepard. Her instinct warned her to try to cover the words with a laugh, and make them into a joke, but the time for all her careful, evasive armor, had ended. She had one secret left to keep from Miranda; everything else had to be laid bare. "He learns very quickly." Her hands tried to curve into fists; she smoothed her tunic again to keep them occupied. "I'm glad you two have reached an accord," she said. "Trust is hard to come by, but we'll need it to face the Collectors."

"Shepard." Miranda hesitated, staring out the viewport as she gathered her words. "I owe you more than thanks for what you did on Ilium. Saving my sister — you had no reason to do that, but you did it anyways. For that, I will… _endeavor_ to accept your entire story." 

"Don't do me any favors," said Shepard. Any acid in her words was diluted by the laugh that followed. "But _endeavor_ away, Miranda." She turned to the viewport, watching the harsh pinpricks of light beyond her ship. "Thanks," she said, after a long, comfortable silence stretched out between them. "It means a lot that you're trying, and I want you to —" 

Miranda settled deeper into her chair. "Don't ruin the moment, Shepard," she warned through what might have been a smile. 

***

What Shepard needed after Haestrom was dinner, a hot shower, and bed. She was lucky enough to manage the first two, though only the hot shower came close to satisfying her, and when it became clear that _bed_ was a reality but _sleep_ was not, she spent the rest of the night shift in the briefing room, rereading her squad's dossiers and debating new squad configurations. 

She dismissed the idea of a full-biotics ground squad — it appealed to the part of her that would always be fourteen, and amazed at the amount of destruction her body could cause — and had moved on to considering Zaeed, Samara, and Mordin when the door to the briefing room slid open, and Jacob, not Miranda, stepped through. 

"Mr. Taylor," she said, with a brief glance up before she set her datapad aside. "You're up early." 

"Yes ma'am," he said over the hiss of the doors closing. "EDI said you were awake, and — well, there's something I'd like to discuss before the morning briefing." 

"Something bothering you?" Shepard wished Miranda had beaten Jacob in this morning; she'd have brought coffee, and possibly a ration bar, if her worries about Shepard's weight concerned her that much. Coffee and a full stomach would have made whatever Jacob said next much more palatable. 

"The Illusive Man had better people than me working on those dossiers," was all that Jacob had to say before Shepard knew exactly what turn the conversation had taken, and no amount of coffee could make it palatable. "But Thane Krios — he's an assassin, Commander. I apologize if I'm stepping over any lines, but are you sure you want an assassin watching your back?"

 _I'm going to punch him in the face,_ Shepard thought, sharp irritation making the last of her headache rustle at her temples. _No, scratch that. I'm going to slam his face into the bulkhead. Probably more than once._ "What's your concern?" she asked, her voice steady. 

"I don't like mercenaries," Jacob said. "An assassin is just a precise mercenary, and they're only loyal to their next paycheck" 

The first reply that came to mind — _good thing no one else on this ship has ever changed loyalties —_ had to be discarded. _Where the hell did he get the gall to talk about loyalty? Forget the bulkhead. I'm going to throw him out the airlock._

She folded her arms over her chest. "Your input is noted, Mr. Taylor," she said, cutting across whatever he might have said next. "I appreciate your candor, but Mr. Krios has never operated outside the explicit or implied terms of a contract." Jacob opened his mouth, but Shepard cut across him again, lowering her voice, forming each word precisely before she spoke it. "In fact, he's known for his aversion to collateral damage — an aversion I've personally experienced. So, the answer to your question is _yes,_ he is precisely who I want watching my back." 

Before Jacob fully processed her unspoken reproach, Shepard tilted her head to the side, not smiling, but letting her shoulders relax and her arms drop to her sides. "Besides, he's doing this mission gratis. There isn't much not to like." 

Careful, she had to be so _careful_. She never had to dance around the _SR-1_ squad like this, had she? Shepard ran her tongue over the sore, bitten patch on the inside of her lip and waited for Jacob to reply. _I can't pretend there weren't shitty days, when Wrex was about fifteen seconds away from tearing off Garrus' fringe and Tali was plotting how to get the_ Normandy's _schematics back to the Flotilla._

How the seven of them managed to get anything done, Shepard would never know. Three humans, an asari, a quarian, a turian, and a krogan, chasing evil across the galaxy. They sounded like a punchline to a bad joke, or the summary for a particularly shitty vid. 

 _But look at what we did_. She blew out her irritation with Jacob on a long, inaudible sigh. At least he had _talked_ to her, rather than facing off with Thane in private. That was something, enough to pin her patience on. 

"Squad cohesion isn't your concern," she added. "As your CO, it's mine." _If I could handle Ash with a hangover, I can handle a dying drell assassin_ , she thought, and had to fight to not smirk at the memory. "If there's nothing else, Mr. Taylor, you're dismissed till the briefing."

If Jacob wanted to protest, he gave her no sign, only a salute and a quiet "ma'am" before heading back to the armory. 

Shepard sighed and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. Crisis averted, for now — but the dull fog of exhaustion that she had managed to ignore since coming down to the briefing room pressed down on her shoulders. She needed not just sleep but _rest_ , a few quiet hours to gather together the pieces of herself that Haestrom had scattered. 

How could she expect her squad to operate as a whole, if she was broken into shards? At least — and this was a small blessing, but she held it tight with both hands — the well in her head was silent, with no old-new memories spitting themselves out at the worst possible time. Not that there could be a _good_ time for that to happen, unless it was in the dubious safety of her cabin. 

Or the main battery. 

Would she have been able to catch a few hours' sleep if she had stopped one last time at the battery before heading to her cabin? She wouldn't even have had to try to camouflage the visit as anything other than what it was; Garrus knew what she needed, what they both needed. And she had checked on everyone else after talking to Miranda — why had she not gone to see him? 

The answer came to her as lightly as the brush of a moth's wing: because what they had was _fragile_ , and not ready to bear the weight of her need. On Haestrom, she had asked if he trusted her, practically bullied the answer out of him, and he said _yes_. She was sure of him, but before she took that next step toward what they had been, toward _more_ , he had to be sure of her. 

She would wait till Garrus came to her. Control and patience; they had to be her watchwords, not selfishness, not loneliness. Not _hers_ , at least, and not while there was work to be done. She reached out for a datapad, willing herself past weariness to focus, to _see._

When the doors opened again, half an hour early even for Miranda, Shepard didn't look up, but held out her hand for her mug of coffee. 

"Good morning to you too, Shepard." 

She looked up to find Garrus smiling at her. 

*** 

What caught Garrus off-guard, other than the fact that he had managed to surprise Shepard, was the split second he saw her pleasure in it being him who had walked through the door, and not someone else. He forgot he had come with a head full of questions, because Shepard happy — Shepard _pleased_ — came so rarely that he couldn't resist savoring the look. When would it come again? 

He'd relearned the layers of armor she kept between herself and the rest of the crew, but that instant of total honesty — the quick inhale, the way her eyes widened, the quirk of her mouth — brought the memory of Omega to the surface, sharp enough to draw blood. 

It didn't. For the first time, thinking of Omega didn't feel like a hot knife between his ribs. It stung, but he had his anger, and now Miranda's words, to shield himself. Something remained of the squad — and someone had come back. 

Shepard recovered almost immediately, and without two years of learning to read every shift in her expression, Garrus wouldn't have realized it took any time at all. "Garrus. Didn't think I'd see you till the briefing." She straightened up, one hand pushing a stack of data pads to the side. "Something on your mind?" 

"Oh, you could say that," he said, thinking he had kept his voice light, but Shepard went still, eyes wary, in another change he wouldn't have been able to see two years ago. 

"Anything you want to talk about?" she asked, in her Commander Shepard voice, arms folded over her chest, pale and cold in the harsh overhead light. "Personnel issues?" 

"What?" He shook his head, wondering what had happened in the hours since they had seen each other to leave her so quick to distance herself. "No, Shepard, nothing like that."

She didn't relax by a millimeter; if anything, she coiled tighter around herself, until he could see the strain in her gloved hands as they gripped her arms. If she hadn't controlled herself so well, Garrus knew her hands would be clenched into fists at her sides. "What is it, then? We have about half an hour, so —" 

A half hour — barely enough time to ask one of his questions, let alone all of them. The one sitting at the front of the line — _have you remembered anything else about us, about Omega?_ — would have to wait until they had real privacy, or as close to it as they could get. Asking that in a Cerberus briefing room would push even Shepard's good luck, and Garrus still didn't trust the AI, no matter what EDI said the night before. 

The question he ended up asking, despite a handful more crowding into his mouth, was: "What happened on Akuze?"

If Shepard had been armored before, she went into full lockdown, invisible blast doors sealing as soon as he said the word _Akuze_. She didn't move, or so much as blink, but her absolute stillness unnerved him. She had only ever been this still on Ilos — or when she'd been dead. 

Garrus almost regretted asking, because there was a line between being _blunt_ and being _cruel,_ and he might have vaulted over the line without realizing it, but then Shepard sighed, and the rigid lines of her shoulders and arms collapsed. Her head dropped between her shoulders, hiding her face from him for a horrible, silent few seconds, and when she looked at him again, her mouth curved downward in the same sagging line he had seen on Haestrom. 

This, Garrus realized, was what Shepard would look like as an old woman. 

"Akuze," she said, in a voice so empty Garrus couldn't hold her gaze any longer. "I assume you've read what's in my public files?" 

He nodded, cursing himself silently for needing to _know_ , but whatever clawed its way into her head had set its teeth in Akuze. Maybe, by _knowing_ , he could share her burden. Maybe he could keep himself between whatever wanted to torture her with that memory. He could protect her.

 _Protecting Shepard._ _Right, Vakarian._

"We got hit when we were bunking down for the night," Shepard said. "We were already on edge. A whole settlement, just gone? You hear stories, like Roanoke, or the _Marie Celeste_ back on Earth — every species has got a story like that. People disappear, and there's no reason, no explanation. They're just…gone." She shuddered, and from across the room, Garrus heard the dry click in her throat as she swallowed. "The buildings were all there, all the vehicles too. God, it was like everyone just got up and walked away from whatever they were doing at the same time. We found footprints leading out of the settlement, but they didn't go anywhere. They just ran in circles. They didn't go anywhere." Shepard smiled, but any comfort Garrus might have gotten from the slight curl of her lips was erased by the absolute _nothing_ in Shepard's eyes. She looked right at him, and didn't see him. 

He knew what she saw instead, and it made him sick, sick through to his soul, to have been the one to force her to look.

"I was already asleep when it — when the maws hit. The guys on patrol were screaming, firing at random — that was what told me it had all gone to shit. They were just _shooting_. No pattern, no rhythm. One of the guys in my unit, Phillips, I'd known him since basic. Steadiest hands I knew, nothing threw him, and he was screaming just like the rest." Shepard touched her mouth with her fingertips. "Fifty marines don't stand much of a chance against two maws," she said, after a long pause that Garrus didn't break. "Even with two Makos, we only took out the first one, and after that, we didn't — we just ran. Scattered. Just like the footprints." 

She fell silent again, her hand still near her mouth. "I ran for a long time," she said, the catch in her voice so easily missed, if Garrus hadn't strained to hear it. "In the end, it was just me. I got back to one of the Makos, but not before I got hit with the acid. Knees to shoulders, all over my back. I blew the second maw to shit, and then I just…waited till the medics got there. I don't remember all of what happened after that, but it was bad. Once I got to Arcturus, one of the doctors let it slip that I flatlined. I — I died. But they brought me back —" She shuddered again, so violently it looked like a convulsion, but when Garrus tried to come closer, sick and bewildered, she held out a hand to stop him. "They told me I was the only survivor," she whispered, and threw her head back, blinking fast up at the lights. "They lied."

"Was that Toombs?" he asked, his own voice too rough and too loud for the room. This was pulling out a rotted tooth, this prodding and pulling, this _ambush_ , but he felt time slipping past them all too quickly. Miranda could walk through the door at any moment, and the rest of the squad wouldn't be far behind. But he heard Shepard's voice, echoing in that dark room on Haestrom, saying _I…killed Toombs._ "You said —"

 _Should have waited,_ he told himself, coldly furious _. Should have waited till we had more time._

Shepard's low, gutted laugh cut off his silent recriminations. "That I killed Toombs?" she asked. "Yeah, that wouldn't show up in the file, would it? I did, though. I killed him. But not on Akuze. Not for years." Each word punched its way out of her, bowing her shoulders. "You'll love this, Garrus, it's so ironic it's almost funny. When I was an N6, I got pulled for an infiltration mission —" 

Garrus couldn't help it; his browplates rose, and a low rumble of disbelief rolled out of his mouth before he could swallow it down. 

Shepard laughed again, leaning against the table in a way that was almost casual, except for her hand gripping the edge like she would collapse if she let go. "Yeah, hilarious, right? That's what I thought. Who sends a _biotic_ on a black ops mission? The brass had their reasons — someone had a point to prove. It doesn't matter, not now. What matters —" 

Garrus broke the careful control he'd exerted so far, and crossed the room to take Shepard by the shoulders. "Shepard, you don't have to —" 

"What matters is what I found when I got there," she said. Up close, Garrus saw how her eyes glittered, her lashes heavy with tears. "It was supposed to be so simple. Mercs had grabbed a bunch of Alliance scientists, and I had to get them out. Smash and grab. You know, what I'm good at. Human shotgun, right? But when I got to the last room, all of the scientists were dead, except one, and the merc — it was Toombs, Garrus, Toombs had a gun to the last scientist's head." 

"How?" he said, unable to fathom how chance had managed to produce something so cruel. 

"I don't know, Garrus," Shepard said. The tears didn't fall from her eyes, but he felt her desperation in the way she gripped his wrists and squeezed, the resurrected strength in her fingers making his bones ache. "But it was him, I'd know him anywhere, and he just screamed absolute shit at me, about Akuze, about how this was all a set up so they could get what they wanted, and he had to finish his job —" 

"But you had a job too," Garrus whispered, his tongue dry in his mouth. He rubbed his thumbs against her collarbone — _clavicula_ , he corrected himself, the impossible weight of his longing pressing down on his back. 

"Yeah," Shepard said. Beneath the still-fresh horror and grief in her voice, he heard a soft murmur of relief. He knew what the question, and her honest answer, had cost her, but now she didn't carry all the weight. Now they could share it. "So I killed him. I made it quick, Garrus, but — but now you know why they want Akuze. It's like they feed on what's in our heads, the worst of it, and…" She shook her head, pulling herself upright and breathing in deep inhales that grew steadier and slower as her control returned. 

"I should be furious at you for making me tell you all that," she said, almost brisk enough to hide the slight quaver under her words. "But I'm not." 

She understood, Garrus realized. Call it intuition, call it a lucky guess, but she knew why he'd asked. Of course she did; Shepard had always been good at taking the worst hits for the best reasons. Knowing that didn't quite loosen the knot of guilt in his chest, but even if he couldn't protect her, he could share the weight. 

Her hands didn't move from his wrists, and Garrus was selfishly grateful for the contact. How had he gone three months without her? How had he _not asked_ the first time he heard her humming, the first time he saw her? 

But with his longing came something new: _exhaustion_ , a great weariness rising in him as he realized how prominent her collarbone felt under his hands, and how her cheeks were hollow as seashells. Garrus loved Shepard, he would _always_ love her, but he knew it had been easier when she was dead, and the worst had already happened to her. The thought of protecting her was ludicrous. Where could he even begin? Shepard would throw herself into the darkness between the stars, howling at the shapes rising in the silent spaces, and he would follow. 

So much could happen to her. So much already _had_ , and he couldn't stop any of it. He leaned down, so tired he couldn't make a sound, and pressed his forehead to hers.

Shepard slid her hands up to stroke his fingers. " _Clavicula_ ," she whispered, but the smile he heard in her voice dissolved as her muscles tightened, new tension folding into the old, sucking in a sharp breath. "Dammit, it was there. I had something." 

"Shepard," he said, forcing his hands not to shake. "It's fine. Don't —" 

"It's _not_ fine," she hissed, jerking away from him. "It's all in there. It's mine, so why can't it just come back? Why do I have to see Akuze and Alchera and not —" She sighed, frustration rolling off her in hot waves, and waved at the space between them. "I know nothing is free, but I — god, I nearly said _it's not fair_." 

Garrus laughed, dry and thin, but he watched Shepard relax and some of her brittle anger fade away as she heard him. "Well, it's not," he said. "But as long as we understand that—" He let the sentence trail off as Shepard nodded, smoothing her hands over her cheeks. 

"Not like we've ever had an even playing field," she said, a faint smile lifting her lips. "Why start now? We'd just get bored. Maybe Nor will show up and be cryptic." 

"Being bored is the last thing I'm worried about, Shepard," he said, ignoring the urge to swear at Nor's name. She laughed, the stark, birdlike laugh he remembered so clearly, and before the sound could fade away, he reached out and touched his thumb to the soft curve under her lip. 

Shepard's eyes flickered closed, and she hummed, a low murmur of pleasure. "Tell me that's not all I get," she said, a roughness in her voice that sent a familiar shiver through him. "Or do I have to beg like I did last night?" 

" _That_ was you begging?" he asked, a wicked impulse to lock the door fogging his brain. "You can do better than that, Shepard." 

He saw the challenge spark in her eyes, and oh, no, he would never have to worry about being bored. Not with Shepard. 

She stepped back into his space, her smile twisting into something sly. Garrus saw her brief hesitation before she reached for the collar of his armor, the only sign that Shepard was unsure of her welcome, but she tugged him down  as if she never doubted it at all. 

" _Please_ ," she whispered, her mouth inches from his, and for the second time in as many days, Garrus saw no reason to refuse her. 

He let Shepard take the lead, expecting a chaste brush of her mouth to his, but it seemed her turn to surprise him had arrived. Her kiss was hungry, hot, slick; Garrus knew her mouth, knew when she would press closer, knew when she would pull away, her eyes soft. She might not remember the times they had done this, stood so close and clung so tightly, but she _knew_ , and that was enough. For the moment. 

"You know," she said, after running the tip of her tongue over her lips — which seemed unconscious, but tempted Garrus to interrupt her with another kiss. "It'll be my turn to ask next." 

No way to play dumb, not with Shepard watching him so closely. Garrus nodded slowly, already feeling his gut knot with dread. Shepard was playing more fairly than he had — more fairly than he deserved. 

She tugged him down again and pressed a kiss to his mandible. "It's not a punishment, Garrus," she said, close to his hide. "But we have to — there can't be any surprises. So all the secrets have to come out."

"All of them," he agreed, his voice as soft as hers. She gave him another kiss, lingering and warm, then released him, the tips of her fingers skating over his armor before she stepped away. 

"So now we look at the next stage," she said, her warmth fading to brisk efficiency. Garrus knew it was no reflection on him, or what they had just done, but the change from their own kind of intimacy back to planning for war jarred him, left him feeling fragile under his hide. If he had enough time, he could learn to enjoy this slow fall as they relearned one another. 

By the look Shepard gave him, her brows arching and her eyes wistful, she had caught the direction of his thoughts. Their time, for the moment, had run out, and the mission was their only priority. "I thought the only stage was 'stop the Collectors'," he said, standing at her shoulder as she sorted through datapads. "Wasn't that the way it worked with Saren?" 

"Don't get complacent on me, Garrus," she said, one corner of her mouth lifting. "We've got the squad, now it's time to see what they can do. I've got a list of squad configurations I want to try out, and you're on half of them." She held out a datapad. "I need someone I trust at my back." 

"Who's got your back the rest of your time?" he asked, scanning the text for his answer. "Miranda?" 

"I think she and I are past the _I'm-just-an-investment_ stage," said Shepard. "And even if we're not, well, she'd be shooting herself in the foot if she —" 

"Shot you?" 

Shepard huffed. "Very funny, Garrus." As she plucked the datapad out of his head, she gave him one of her cold, assessing looks. After almost three years, the sensation of being very small and wriggling on the end of a pin didn't fade. Garrus met the look without flinching, but only long practice saved him. "You don't have to tell me what you talked about with her," she said, "but I need to know if there's going to be a problem between the two of you." 

"No problem," he said, relieved he could give her that reassurance. "We're not friends, but we'll work together just fine. Jack, on the other hand —" 

"That, you'll just have to suck up," Shepard said, her expression warming to wry amusement. "She's got an attitude, a problem with authority, but she comes by them honestly." She rubbed her forehead. "Damn Cerberus." 

Garrus had a reply ready, but he only got as far as opening his mouth and resting his hand on Shepard's shoulder before the door opened and Miranda swept in, her face frozen. 

"Miranda?" asked Shepard, a frown puckering her brows. "Where's the fire?" She didn't move away from Garrus, but if Miranda noticed, she didn't say a word. 

What she did say was, "We've got them, Shepard. A dead Collector ship, thirty-six hours out from the relay." 

Shepard went still under Garrus' hand, sharp hunger in the set of her mouth. 

 _No rest_ , Garrus thought, his hand falling from her shoulder. _I should have kissed her again._


	41. Chapter 41

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween, my lovelies! <3

If there had been more time, Shepard would have cut her squad's teeth on some of the smaller missions cluttering her private terminal. Ever since the rumors of her resurrection had begun to ring of truth — no doubt thanks to her visits to the Citadel and Ilium — the chorus of vague, helpless had begun to sing again. _Help us, Shepard. It's dark where we are, and there are shapes moving beyond our walls. Help us keep the fires burning, Shepard. You're the only one who can._

_Help us, Shepard_. 

She stared down at her hands _. How many people am I going to leave behind this time around?_ she thought, and shook off the thought as soon as it formed.She had no time for regret or for trying, one more time, to believe she could save everyone.Not now, when thirty-six hours after they hit the relay, Shepard would have to put boots on a dead Collector Ship, and trust that her squad would see her through. 

She looked up as the door opened for the final time, and Jack and Zaeed tried to shove through at once. Shepard tried to summon more of a reaction than weary amusement, but found nothing. Stupid, petty power struggles. Jack whirled around to spit a curse in Zaeed's direction, full lips pulled back over her teeth, practically hissing. Zaeed simply gave her a cold, fish-eyed glare. 

Right. Shepard stood straight, and clasped behind her back. She would _trust_ these people to see her through to the other side. 

"Thank you all for coming." Her voice cut through the gathered tension, drove it back toward the walls, and held it there, tethered and waiting for when she wanted to unleash it. At the foot of the table, Garrus gave her a slight nod, his mandibles flaring in a swift, almost imperceptible smile. Miranda waited at her right side, arms folded over her chest, no doubt staring down Jack across the table. 

_Trust_ , Shepard told herself. "We caught a break," she said. "This morning, one of Cerberus' deep space probes picked up a distress signal from a turian frigate. Turns out they'd run into the Collectors, here." A bright spot on the star map sprang up, out on one of the thin, spiral-dust arms of the galaxy. "The probe verified that the frigate is still docked with the Collector ship, though the vessel did not return hails." 

No one seemed surprised, even the squad members who hadn't been with her on Horizon or Haestrom. The Collectors were boogeymen to the rest of the galaxy, but the squad knew that these boogeymen had dragged themselves out from under the bed, and were now trying to crawl into it.

"So is this a rescue mission, Commander?" asked Jacob. "We're not equipped to —"

"The Collectors don't leave survivors." Shepard gave him a quelling look when he tried to keep speaking, and aimed her words like bullets. "The only reason why anyone was left behind on Horizon was because we interrupted them." 

_What would Ash say?_ she thought. _Probably 'So when does the shooting start, Skipper?'_

She leaned forward on the table, fixing each member of the squad with her gaze. "Horizon gave us our first glimpse of our enemy. The Collectors still think they can hide. Let's prove them wrong." 

The tension in the room pressed against her, and laid its heavy weight on her tongue. Oh, but this tension she could use, and shape into a living weapon if her squad survived the forging. "You all have your reasons for being here," she said. "Good or bad reasons, I don't care. What matters is that you're here, now, and I expect you all to do the job. You've got something that's holding you back, you leave it on the _Normandy_ when we're on a mission. We don't have time to figure out how to play nice. 

"Things are going to start moving very quickly," she went on, her mind turning toward Nor as she echoed the spirit's words. She glanced at Garrus, expecting a shift, a look, some sign that his thoughts had moved in the same direction, but he stayed still, an impassive, guarded figure. 

She hated these do-or-die pep talks, giving or receiving. A good thing, then, that generic hero came to her so easily. "But you were chosen for this. The best of the best. Prove it to me. _Be the best_ , because there's no one to take our place if we fall. I don't care if you hate each other. You'll fight the Collectors, not each other, and you'll keep fighting them until we win or we die. Is that clear?" 

No one had anything to say to that, smart-ass or otherwise, though she expected _something_ from Zaeed, and even waited a few beats to give him his chance.

Fine by her. They didn't have to speak to take orders. 

"Good." She unclasped her hands and leaned forward, propping her fists on the table and looking around. "I'll keep the rest of this short. In forty-seven minutes, we'll hit the relay. On arrival, I'll lead a six-member squad with me to the Collector Ship, while the rest of you will be prepped and ready to provide support if needed. Operative Lawson will lead the second squad."

Jack snorted from her corner, sneering and rolling her eyes, and the word _cheerleader_ floated through the air. 

"Thank you for your input, Jack," said Shepard, her tone deceptively mild. Jack snorted again, but when Shepard looked up, Jack's eyes were fixed on the opposite wall. 

"Have you decided on your squad members, Shepard?" asked Miranda, clipped and frosty, shooting pointed glances at Jack and leaning heavily on Shepard's name for added emphasis: _mind your place, because mine is at Shepard's side._

"Garrus, Jack, Thane, Jacob, and Zaeed," Shepard replied, and felt Miranda's tension ebb away. One crisis avoided, for the moment. She'd have to untangle Miranda and Jack before the end, but she filed that away for later consideration. 

_Don't borrow trouble, it'll find you soon enough, my girl_ , said her mother's voice. _More than it already has_. 

_Thanks, Mom._

"The Collectors use modified barrier protection instead of shields, but biotics knock them down pretty quick." She looked across the room and nodded at Zaeed, then Garrus. "Concussive blast, too. Both squads will carry Incendiary or Warp ammo, whatever you're most comfortable handling. If you're not," she said, directing her next words to the rest of the squad, "you've got thirty-six hours for a crash course on the practice range. Lieutenant Corwin will assist. Word of advice: Warp ammo's a lot more forgiving. At least it won't burn the skin off your hands if you screw up." 

That earned her a handful of quiet laughs, and she allowed herself a small smile. None of them had been there when Liara had discovered just how vicious Incendiary ammo could be, and no one but Garrus knew how good-naturedly she had borne the teasing while her burns kept her off the ground squad for two weeks. He laughed louder than the memory deserved, but she heard the relief in his subvocals, and her relief rose up to meet it, and shook hands with his over the table. 

When the room fell quiet again, Shepard tapped a quick message on her omni-tool. "We're not going to sit on our asses till we get to the ship," she said, over a chorus of beeps as the squad's 'tools received her message. "What you're reading is the schedule for the next thirty-six hours. I plan on assessing each of you individually in the combat simulator, then in rotating groups of three. I had planned on a few milk runs to shake out squad configurations before we hit our first big mission, but —" 

"Gold star for effort," said Garrus, with the turian equivalent of a shit-eating grin. Shepard glared at him, biting her tongue to keep from smiling back, and made a mental note to get her revenge later. Painfully. 

"I was going to say _the road to hell is paved with good intentions_ , but since that might be in bad taste considering where we're heading, fine, gold star, Garrus," she said, and by the way his mandibles twitched, he knew she wasn't going to forget his little interjection. 

Miranda glanced at Garrus, then at Shepard with one eyebrow raised, and Shepard stifled a sigh. Nothing was ever easy, and now Miranda would know there was something else to sniff out. 

_Sniff away_ , thought Shepard, still struggling not to smile. _Sorry to disappoint, Miranda. I wish there was something to get excited about._

"There's no telling what we're going to encounter when we get to the ship. We'll proceed under the assumption that some systems remain active, and that those systems will be hostile. And a dead ship doesn't mean a dead crew. Don't kid yourselves — we're heading toward a combat zone. I expect you all to review the Horizon briefing, as well as the intel from Freedom's Progress." 

"We'll be runnin' ragged before we get to the goddamn ship," grumbled Zaeed. Miranda started to protest — _we obey orders on this ship_ — but Shepard held up a hand. 

"Don't worry, you'll get some nap time, Zaeed," she said, her voice light. "And I don't think you can sprain something from reading. But don't feel like you have to prove me wrong." 

The laughter was louder this time, and even Mordin and Thane cracked smiles. 

"Any questions?" Shepard asked, nodding as first Samara, then Jacob stepped forward.  

*** 

With five hours left until she gathered her squad, Shepard met with Miranda for the last time. 

_Don't be so pessimistic_ , she told herself as she rode the elevator down. _'Last time'_ _sounds so ominous._

_Then again, so does "dead Collector Ship"._

By now, Shepard knew the hot twist in her belly wasn't just anticipation or dread, but impatience as well. Too many variables waited for her once she and her squad left the _Normandy_. There might be nothing of use on the other side, or long, lonely deaths at the hands of the Collectors. But in five hours, better or worse, she would _know_. 

She stepped off the elevator, nodded to the crewmen clustered outside, and turned toward Miranda's quarters.

Miranda met her entrance with a frown, shifting the ever-present pile of datapads to one side.

"Shepard, I expected —" She paused, shaking her head. "There are no immediate concerns beyond the mission. This briefing could have waited until your return." 

Shepard sat down across from Miranda, wondering if anyone else ever sat in her chair. "It's our last chance to talk one-on-one before we head for the Collector Ship, Miranda. There's no telling what we'll find on the other side, and I'd rather be too thorough. Just in case." She cocked her head, and allowed herself a small smile. "If there's anything on your mind, now's the time." 

Miranda nodded. "There is one, small concern. I wasn't going to mention it." 

"Go ahead."

 "The combat simulator is precisely that. A _simulator_. It's not equipped for full biotic sparring," she admonished, her frown deepening when Shepard laughed. 

"Jacob and Thane looked like they were having so much fun that I had to join in. Besides," she said, reaching for the wave and letting a faint current of dark energy flow down her right arm, "it's been a while since I had a challenge." Her skin prickled under her tunic as she let go of the wave, and the blue light around her fist faded. "The _Normandy_ survived, Miranda, if that's what you're worried about. Or are you disappointed you didn't get an invitation to the match?" she teased. 

" _Hardly_ ," said Miranda, with a faint sneer. "I'm only relieved you didn't ask Jack to join in." 

"I've seen her capabilities up close, and I'm confident that she's the right choice for the mission." Shepard settled deeper into her chair. Her muscles burned pleasantly from the sparring, faint traces of dark energy still riding her nervous system. "I didn't want to risk blowing a hole in the side of the ship, in any case. I've been in the tabloids enough for one lifetime." 

Miranda flinched. 

More precisely, her right hand ever so slightly clenched, and her mouth tightened — two tiny movements. Two tiny _tells_ that Shepard would have missed completely if not for Lamia's last lesson. 

That last lesson had been about lies, and how someone's body could always, always be trusted to betray them. 

"Miranda," she said, careful to keep the word a request, and not an order. "Something you want to tell me?" 

"Nothing," said Miranda, smoothly, her voice cool and professional. If Shepard had only been listening, she would have believed Miranda — but she was watching too, and saw that tiny clench of Miranda's fingers again. 

"Don't make me call you a liar, Miranda," she said. "Tell me." 

"I'm not —" Miranda took a deep breath. "There are no immediate concerns," she said a moment later. "Our focus needs to be on the mission. _Your_ focus needs to be on the mission." 

Shepard knew deflection, however expertly deployed. Instead of replying, she folded her hands over her knee and waited, though the wolf in her heart strained to leap, to chase, to _hunt._ She held the wolf back, and waited Miranda out. 

Silence demanded to be filled. No matter how well someone knew that, the temptation still remained, and neither Miranda nor the Illusive Man could resist. 

"This could have waited," said Miranda, clearly meaning _You asked,_ and opened her omnitool display. "I'm sorry, Shepard." 

Kaidan's face leapt into view, his skin bleached out by a harsh light that made him squint into the camera. He tried to back away, but a too-familiar voice called him back, shouting his name.

"Captain — Captain Alenko! A moment of your time, please!" 

_Al-Jilani_ , thought Shepard, her mouth going dry. _Oh, god, poor Kaidan_. Then, her sympathy for Kaidan evaporated, and was replaced with pure bewilderment. 

_Captain Alenko._

Kaidan turned back to Al-Jilani, his mouth in a hard line and his eyes flat and icy. He looked — he looked like a stranger, an implacable, unwelcoming stranger, and Shepard barely recognized her squad mate in his face or his posture. 

"Captain," said Al-Jilani from off-camera, her voice echoing slightly. Shepard could see skycars passing behind Kaidan, and one of the arms of the Citadel arching over his head. Of course she would catch him on the Citadel; she'd always loved to ambush Shepard this way, until only the threat of Hackett's gravely disapproval kept her from pistol-whipping the woman. Now she had Kaidan. "Captain, there are rumors — sir, there are rumors that Commander Shepard isn't dead. Sir? Sir!" she shouted, as Kaidan started to turn away. "Is it true? Is the Commander still alive?" 

"Yes," said Kaidan, stiffly, his lips barely moving. "Commander Shepard is alive." 

"In that case, where has she been all this time? The Alliance reported that she was killed in action by the geth, two years ago. Why the lies, Captain? Was she working on —" 

"I could hardly tell you if the Commander was on a classified mission," Kaidan replied. 

_He doesn't even sound like himself._ Shepard's throat closed to a pinhole. No air, no air anywhere in the room, and especially not in her lungs. _I can't breathe, and next comes the fire. Captain Alenko. Kaidan, what happened to you?_

"What do you have to say about the rumors that Commander Shepard is working with Cerberus? Is it true she's working with a known terrorist organization?" Al-Jilani's voice came from light-years away, as Kaidan's face twisted. He turned his face away from the camera, a muscle twitching in his neck. When he turned back, his eyes looked like twin bullet holes. 

"As you said, Cerberus is a known terrorist organization," he said, and white noise began to roar in Shepard's head. She recognized Kaidan's voice — nothing in the galaxy could make her forget — and she knew his face, but Kaidan wasn't speaking. She was watching a mouthpiece, a correct, polished mouthpiece, not her friend, not her _squadmate._ The taste climbing her throat wasn't despair. 

It was _hate_. 

"If the Commander is working with them, then it goes without saying she's severed all ties with the Alliance. And I personally have to question her mental state." Kaidan paused, and the _pause_ was him. Careful Kaidan, always so precise with his targets. "The Commander Shepard I knew would never have allied herself with a group like Cerberus." 

Miranda shut off the video, and Kaidan's face blinked out of existence. Gone, just as quickly as Ash — but this wasn't loss, this was _amputation_. 

_If a tooth is rotten_ , _pull it out,_ Shepard thought, her eyes stinging. _Goodbye, Kaidan._

*** 

Garrus paused with his hand over the terminal, on the verge of dialing the last number, and then he let his hand fall away, back to his side. After thirty seconds, the terminal beeped impatiently, prompting him to finish the string of numbers blinking on the display. When he didn't move, the terminal's VI waited another fifteen seconds, then erased the numbers. 

"Call cancelled," said the VI's cool, empty voice. 

_Add that to the twenty other times I've tried to make this call_ , he thought. _Tried, and never quite succeeded._

He had no doubt that his father knew by now that he was alive; in all the ways that mattered Thrace Vakarian hadn't retired, and any real news made its way to him eventually. The fact that his son was serving on a Cerberus ship, under an alive Commander Shepard, might have been rumors to most of the galaxy, but a C-Sec officer learned early on how to separate fact from fiction. Garrus had learned that trick at his father's side. Thrace knew, and Garrus hadn't called him. 

_What would I say?_ He glared at the terminal, vaguely aware of his hands clenching into fists. _That yes, it's a Cerberus ship, and yes, I remember what they did two years ago, and yes, I've left my job again to follow a Spectre? How well would that go over? On a scale of one to Sovereign attacking the Citadel, probably somewhere around Horizon._  

Garrus sighed, and turned off the terminal. What good would calling his father do, with less than two hours to the Collector ship? His father wouldn't, couldn't know what they faced; what words could his father offer him to help see him through? And wasn't he old enough to not go running home when the galaxy began to burn? 

The fires came. No doubt about that. But no, no comfort for him now, just the mission, and — 

_I called him on Omega,_ Garrus thought, running a hand over his fringe. _Right at the end — what I thought was the end. He was the one I called and he told me to come home._

One more order he hadn't followed. Bad son, bad turian. 

_What's that phrase Shepard and Ash used? 'Better late than never'?_ He huffed a quiet laugh, with no real humor in it, and turned the terminal back on. It wouldn't help the unease stirring in his gut and leaving a sour taste on the back of his throat, but it would bring him — 

_Don't think it._

_—_ closure. 

Just in case. 

Garrus sighed again, and as the air left him, his armor settled around him. It still smelled like medi-gel, under the clean scent of his sweat, and even without turning his head, he could see the cracked and burned edge of his collar. He had started to pay for his failure, but the debt would never be washed out. Dying on the Collector ship wouldn't scrub out the stains on his hands. Blood washed off easily enough, but guilt lingered. Failure lingered. 

_Hey, boss!_

"Officer Vakarian?" 

Miranda's voice cut into the humid air of the battery, like ice cracking underfoot. Garrus paused, the number still undialed.

"Yes?" he answered. "What is it?" With a flick, he cleared the number from the terminal, sending an apology to his father, hoping it would reach Palaven before the void ate it away. 

_Soon, Dad, I promise._

Miranda hesitated, a slight crackle of static filling her silence. "You're needed in the CIC." 

***

The shattered collar of his armor got him a few surprised looks as he stepped off the elevator onto the CIC, from the same people who had looked so surprised the only other time he'd made an appearance. Maybe they thought he should have gotten a new set, or maybe they were simply shocked by his presence on the ship. Garrus didn't think they had seen too many turians — at least, not up close, and not ones they were expected to work with. 

Miranda met him at the end of the corridor leading to the cockpit. A narrow furrow had etched itself between her brows, and her arms were folded tightly over her chest, her hands gripping her elbows. 

"What's the situation?" he asked, when he was close enough to only be heard by her. In response, she tilted her head toward the cockpit and fell into step beside him. 

"We're on approach to the Collector ship," she said. "And we're picking up a distress signal from the turian vessel." 

Garrus waited. When Miranda said nothing else, he stopped and stared down at her. "Wasn't a distress signal what your probes picked up to begin with? What's changed?" 

The furrow in between Miranda's brows deepened. Before she spoke, Garrus heard the slight hesitation in her voice, and the way she clipped her words ever more precisely as she wanted to make up for it. "There's been an addition." 

"Addition?" he asked, slow dread uncurling in his veins and chilling his hands. "What kind of _addition?_ " 

Miranda began to reply, and got as far as opening her mouth before shaking her head and starting to walk toward the cockpit again. "Shepard said you should hear it for yourself." 

She led him down the corridor, their footsteps echoing off the walls, then stepped aside so he could enter the cockpit first. A barely audible murmur greeted him, but he recognized it as the standard turian military distress signal: ship name, identification number, commanding officer, station of origin, and cause of distress. He could have recited it from memory, for every ship he'd served on.  

Shepard stood off to one side, her back to him, and her arms folded over her chest in an unconscious imitation of Miranda's pose. Of course, Miranda hadn't looked so weighted down, nor had her shoulders curved inward in a deceptively fragile line. Shepard had pinned up her hair, leaving her neck pale and vulnerable in the dim cockpit lights, and an entirely inappropriate memory — _her hair loose and spilled over the pillows on his bed, the lights low, the squad sleeping, the old scars still visible, and she smiled, beckoning him back to bed —_ rose up, too powerful, at first, to resist. 

Garrus had known control longer than he had known Shepard, and the memory and the way it tried to shade the room around him dissolved after a few deep breaths _. Do your job_ , he told himself, pulling himself up to attention. The bandages on his neck strained as he lifted his head, and he focused on that, counting the beats of the dull, pulsing ache just under his skin. 

"So, Garrus, welcome back. Wow, damn, doc wasn't kidding when she said you nearly lost your face." Joker wheeled around in his chair, smiling and tilting his head back to meet Garrus' eyes. "Still, glad you're back. Just one question for you." 

"Mr. Moreau _,"_ said Miranda, her voice far beyond frosty, and verging on arctic. Garrus turned his head, his healing muscles protesting, and saw the furrow between her brows had deepened to a slash, and her cheeks were flushed with a high, vivid red. "Now is not the time." 

"Catch any news broadcasts lately?" Joker's smile twisted, and his gaze slid away from Garrus' to rest briefly on Shepard. If she noticed, she gave no sign, but stood unmoving with her eyes fixed out the viewport. 

Even her stillness brought the Omega memories surging up: all the nights Garrus woke to find her standing watch at the foot of the bridge, too still to be alive, to be anyone but herself. He missed those early days, each one like a minefield, as they learned to navigate each other and the half-lit, unknown world they found themselves in. They hadn't been happy, not any kind of happiness he could name, but it had been _right_. Fighting evil, cleaning the scum off the streets and giving the good people a chance to breathe. On some days, it had felt like they saw with the same pair of eyes, and when he pulled the trigger, her hand rested over his. 

Shepard and Vakarian. She was righteous, even dead she was _righteous_ , and for two years, he had been too. Two pure years, and now it was all grey, all filth, and still he could still see the ghost in the living woman as she kept watch in the night. 

Joker turned back to Garrus, jarring him out of the memories — out of the _longing._ The pilot's smile slipped sideways, twisted, and resurfaced on his face as a sneer. "You wouldn't believe the shit they're airing now," he said, and Garrus knew the words weren't meant for him, but for Shepard. "Seriously, it's all —" 

" _Mr. Moreau,"_ Miranda hissed, but Joker raised his voice. 

"You should have seen Al-Jilani's latest, it was a real —" 

"That's enough, Joker," said Shepard, without raising her voice, or sounding at all interested in what Joker had said. She turned away from the window, raising one hand to brush her gloved fingertips against her mouth. Joker looked up at her, the sneer disappearing and something close to a plea in the set of his mouth. Shepard ignored him, her eyes sliding past Joker to meet Garrus'. 

He knew her moods too well to flinch unless she was in one of her rare, white furies, but the utter lack of expression in her gaze sent a new burst of dread spiraling through him. Shepard hid and deflected, but she didn't _lie_ , and if she looked so impassive, it could only be to hide what she truly felt. 

No time to ask. No time to guess. 

Shepard touched her mouth again, then spoke. "EDI, boost the audio. We're almost to what Garrus needs to hear." 

"Yes, Shepard," said the AI, and the murmur rose to normal speaking levels. A turian voice filled the cockpit, almost too young for the second larynx to have developed, but calm and steady. 

— _sudden loss of power for primary and secondary systems, crew has resorted to emergency hard suits, unknown ship not returning hails —_

_No, it wouldn't_. The urge to close his eyes and pray to the spirits came over him, strong enough to tighten his shoulders, but Garrus resisted. He knew better now. 

Shepard watched him steadily, her eyes still empty, not even a quirk of her mouth as a clue to what she was thinking. She had deliberately shut him out, using her own body as armor against him, but he couldn't see _why._

"Shepard, this is standard — nothing stands out, it's all —" 

"Wait for it," she said, nothing in her voice giving her away, because there was nothing in her voice, no fluke or catch to guide him. 

The signal began again, the calm voice reciting the basic information and calling for aid, and then — 

The sound bursting out of the comms wasn't static, but a ground-glass roar, like the breaking of bones. Garrus flinched away from it, aware of Joker and Miranda doing the same. Shepard stood still, unblinking, her eyes fixed on the floor, as the noise sheared through the voice. 

"Goddammit, Shepard, what the hell is that?" said Joker, almost shouting to be heard over the noise. He sounded more annoyed than alarmed. Not in the loop, the. Garrus couldn't help feeling a brief moment of envy under his dread; ignorance really could be a kind of bliss, as the humans said. "Some kind of interference? It's not static, it sounds like…" He broke off with another wince, as the transmission ended, and the noise disappeared. Miranda let out a long, flat breath, her lips thinned. The air in the cockpit shuddered with the residual echoes, and every sound seemed flattened and far-off as the echoes faded. 

"Haestrom," said Garrus, his voice rough. He had seen the mouth and throat that shaped this noise, and he had seen what lay under it: dead stone, dark water, and ancient, hungry cold. He had seen the blood on Shepard's face, the fingers digging into her mouth, and he knew — better than ever now, too well — what Shepard had paid to kill the Sarcophagus. Akuze, a dead world raised back to vicious, mindless life. 

Hadn't that been enough of a price to pay? Wasn't she _still_ paying it? 

Wasn't he?

"Haestrom?" said Miranda. "What — ah." She cut herself off, with a pointed glance at Joker. "Will you be making any changes to your ground squad, Shepard?" Garrus chanced a look in Miranda's direction, and watched with distant fascination as the furrow in her brow disappeared, replaced with deadly focus. No doubt she was reconfiguring mission perimeters, considering these new variables, and a part of Garrus admired her efficiency, how effortlessly she incorporated the improbable into her paradigms. "Should we prepare the medbay for survivors?" she added, and though she kept looking at Shepard, Garrus knew the question was meant for him as well, just not for him to answer. A peace offering, perhaps, this willingness to help turians. 

Turians whose bodies probably littered their silent ship, with blood crusting their eyes and noses, and their last nightmares still hovering in what was left of the atmosphere. Garrus drew his mandibles tight to his face, dismay and anger warring for place in his chest. His right cheek ached under the bandage, but he barely noticed. _We couldn't save any of them from this._

A voice whispered, deep in his head. _Not that you've ever been able to,_ boss _._  

"We'll proceed with the mission as planned," Shepard said. Her mouth tightened as Garrus watched, her eyes closing a fraction of a second too long as she blinked. She straightened immediately, catching Garrus' gaze with a wry, bitter smile that disappeared as quickly as her weariness. The slender column of her neck bent, ever so slightly, her shoulders curved inward again, and Garrus felt a swell of weary impotence. He couldn't help her — he couldn't even touch her, and try to shift some of the weight to his shoulders. 

_She'll see Akuze again if she steps on that ship, and she knows it_ , Garrus thought. _She'll live it again. But she'll do it anyways. Dammit, Shepard._  

Without a doubt, Omega waited for him, his own dead world, but it hadn't killed him. He had _lived_ , even if he didn't deserve to, but Akuze had killed Shepard. Garrus didn't know how many times someone could die, and still come back anything close to whole, but sooner or later, something was left behind. He wouldn't let it happen to Shepard.  

"I want everyone prepped in forty-five minutes. Full hard suits, we're treating this as full vacuum." Shepard's voice, not loud, but implacable, filled his ears, his head. Her eyes met his, and there, there was the fire, the will, the strength to carry the strain of so many deaths. "Have Chakwas prep the medbay for survivors. Even if it's unlikely, I want to be ready." 

The comms crackled again, and everyone but Shepard winced, ready for the noise to burst in on them again, and claw its way into their heads. Instead, a weak, plaintive voice floated through the cockpit, young and afraid, one thin cry into the darkness. 

" _Is someone out there?_ " said the voice, the good turian voice. The child's voice. _"Please, can anyone hear me?"_

 

 


	42. Miranda

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am back! Thank you all for sticking with me <3

 Miranda made no effort to hide the sound of her footsteps as she got off the elevator. The sound echoed through the shuttle bay, but the figure standing at a repair bench didn't look up as she approached, or appear to notice her at all. 

She allowed a flash of satisfaction to push through her anxiety; she'd hoped to deliver this news to Shepard alone, before the rest of the squad arrived to prep for departure. Even without the revelations of the past two days, the news was sinister enough. The thought of sharing it before an audience — or worse, trying to draw Shepard away from the squad unobtrusively — made Miranda's head ache. 

_Revelations._ Her back prickled, but she refused to give in to the urge to turn around see if the _spirit_ hovered behind her. Let it -- _Nor_ \-- hover. She'd given it enough of her attention for the time being. Her focus must remain on the living, and the challenges before them. 

Still, her mind kept trying to return to the conversation, if exchanging words with something that defied all the laws of logic and physics could be called a conversation. It was impossible. It was _offensive_ , but Miranda couldn't reject it outright. Her own work had flouted those laws, hadn't it? If anything worthy of her talents existed, surely it would be this. She thought Shepard's resurrection would be her greatest accomplishment, though now it seemed Shepard had returned to life only to offer Miranda a grander prize. In light of that, it was difficult not to feel a rush of perverse affection for Shepard, and for the dark creature she had brought with her, bright-eyed and rough-voiced. 

She tried to reject the comfort it brought — _they are gone from you, but not lost_ — as sentimental, and a waste she couldn't afford, but that team had been hers for two years. She had lead them, guided them, and under her watch, they had made a miracle. Death was no repayment for their service, but knowing something remained, some echo, drew the worst of the sting from the betrayal. In time, she would find who had orchestrated it, and clean the slate. 

For now, thoughts of loss and vengeance had to wait. She straightened her shoulders, and composed her features. None of _her_ anxiety would show. 

Miranda picked up her steps, the echoes bleeding into each other, and prepared what she would say to Shepard when she reached the commander's side. 

Before she reached speaking distance, a bulky, armored shape walked out of the Hammerhead’s shadow, and moved almost soundlessly to Shepard's side. Miranda's first reaction — _that damn thing again —_ dissolved when she realized it wasn't the spirit, but Vakarian, stooping to replace a tool in the kit at his feet. He acknowledged Miranda with a brief glance, and turned his attention back to Shepard. 

"It's not the Mako, but I think I can keep it in shape no matter what you decide to do to it," he said, and Shepard laughed wearily in response. 

"You do realize that joke will get old someday, right? Might want to save some for later." She rubbed her forehead, and slid a thermal clip into her shotgun. "At least the Mako would hold up under fire. I get the feeling the Hammerhead will burst into flame if I look at it wrong." She lifted her head, looking at Miranda with a total lack of surprise. Her fingers kept moving, slotting bolts into place as she spoke. "What horrors does this datapad contain, Miranda? Requisitions? I hoped you'd give me a chance to get blown up first before I had to sign any more."

Behind her, Vakarian's mandibles twitched in a slight grin as he lifted his own rifle to the repair bench.  

"No actual horrors this time," Miranda said, an uneasy sense of intrusion growing at the back of her head. She handed Shepard the datapad, and clasped her hands behind her back as the commander began to read. "Several items of some concern, however. You said to report any new sightings to you immediately." 

"Have they moved beyond Omega?" Vakarian asked, his gaze unreadable behind his visor. 

"It would seem so," Miranda said, her answer earning a concerned flick of his mandibles -- _that_ expression she knew well enough, even with his healing scars to obscure it.

"Shit," said Shepard. Her fingers tightened on the edge of the datapad until the plastic creaked. Miranda braced herself for Shepard to throw it away from her, the muscles in her shoulder tightening, but Shepard set it aside gently, her hand rising to rub at her mouth. "How did it take so long for EDI to trace where this ship had been?"

"The turian military uses an anonymizer program to obscure its ships' travel patterns. The encryption keys refresh every four days. We have the most recent, but backtracking to the correct key took time." Miranda ignored Vakarian’s swift, utter stillness. She had far more pressing concerns than his offense at matters of access. "It's one of three ships that reported sightings of these spirits after docking on Ilium," said Miranda. "The other two are currently en route to the Citadel, but this ship — the _Kraliken —_ was heading back out on a deep-space patrol when it encountered the Collector ship." 

"Shit," Shepard said again. Her voice shook, but when Miranda searched her face, Shepard's eyes looked far past her, already sifting through the permutations of nightmare. 

_Quite poetic,_ Miranda thought. _Now focus._

"Shepard." Vakarian took a step closer, one hand resting on Shepard's armored shoulder. 

Both of them seemed to have forgotten Miranda; Shepard's eyes were still fixed on the datapad, and Vakarian's eyes never wavered from her face. Miranda watched them, caught between pushing the conversation along, and the strange impulse to give them privacy. 

The first _Normandy's_ crew had been close, dangerously so, and Miranda argued for months that no trace of that crew should carry over to this mission. Let the slate be clean, let Shepard only have Cerberus for support. The Illusive Man disagreed, and overrode all her protests. 

_Make her comfortable. Make her believe this is where she should be._

He'd been delighted when Archangel turned out to be Vakarian. Miranda doubted he would be delighted now, if he saw how Vakarian moved as close to Shepard as their armor would allow, or if he saw the bleak look Shepard gave him in response. 

A vicious cramp of envy knotted in Miranda's stomach, unexpected, unprecedented. Not for the touches — turians left her cold, women left her colder — but for the casual intimacy, the ease of Vakarian's hand on Shepard's shoulder, and for how Shepard let him see her like this, her face naked of every expression but exhaustion. 

If Shepard had told the truth — and it seemed that indeed she had — then it followed that Vakarian knew the story as well. It had been foolish of Miranda to assume otherwise, but she had other concerns, new parameters to consider. It hadn't occurred to her to wonder how much Vakarian knew, or — and this was an unpleasant thought, for several reasons — how deeply he was involved. 

How much had Shepard still not told her? 

_This is absurd_ , Miranda scolded herself. _This is not a popularity contest, and I am_ not _in competition with him for Shepard's friendship._

The thought did little to make her feel better. Shepard had seen _her_ vulnerable, over Oriana and then over Nor, and Miranda had hoped — a small hope, yes — that perhaps Shepard might trust her with the same honesty. 

Perhaps Shepard already had. After all, hadn't Shepard faced Miranda's demands for more information with infuriating calm, and then bet everything on how she would react to revealing Nor? Vindicated or not, Shepard had still run the risk of Miranda reporting that Shepard had lost her mind — and then easily bargained for the control chip. She probably would have won. 

"It's like I'm some kind of disease vector," snapped Shepard, all brittle ice and steel again. "It wasn't enough that —" She cut herself off, so quickly Miranda heard the tiny click of her teeth as her mouth closed. 

Vakarian squeezed Shepard's shoulder, a pointless gesture with all their armor. Shepard held up a hand, and stepped away without looking at him. What little Miranda could see of her face showed no emotion but that abstracted focus, cold eyes fixed on points far beyond the shuttle bay. 

"This doesn't change our objective," Shepard said. "Even if we didn't have the Collectors and the _Kraliken_ to worry about, there's no way we'd get to the Citadel in time." 

"To say nothing of how such news would be received," Miranda added. "Especially in light of recent events. I’ll continue to monitor the situation." 

Shepard's eyes met hers, wary, her face settling into an immobile mask, and Miranda realized, with a cruel, petty sense of satisfaction, that she hadn't told Vakarian about Alenko's interview. 

It certainly softened the blow of being relegated to the second squad, though Miranda quashed the satisfaction before it could grow roots. 

"We're not going to get a second chance at gathering intel like this. We will proceed with the mission as planned. Miranda, I want the second squad suited up and ready to drop within fifteen minutes of us leaving the _Normandy_. And I want the drive ready to spin up — I'm not risking another _Normandy_." 

She paused when neither Miranda nor Vakarian responded. Her mouth twisted. 

"If either of you have something to say, now's the time." 

Miranda considered possible replies: _you are emotionally compromised by Alenko's interview_ topped the list, but she barely acknowledged it. Compromised or not, Shepard would not hesitate, would not flinch -- like an animal would chew off one of its limbs to escape a trap. 

_Another argument against the control chip._

"This is the first direct connection we have between my _experiences_ and the Collectors," said Shepard. "And, by extension, the Reapers. I am _tired_ of being part of some cosmic mystery. So we go in, and we see how much EDI can get off the ship before we get into any real trouble." She smiled at them, fierce and cold, and Miranda couldn't stop herself from smiling back. 

_You're a madwoman_ , she thought. _And I must be mad right along with you._

_And that will not be the last time I think that, I'm sure._

Her back prickled again, the unseen eyes watching her. Let Nor watch; they had work to do.  

*** 

Every minute that passed without disaster did nothing to unknot the muscles in Miranda's shoulders. She checked the clips in her SMG once more, then forced herself to slide the gun back into its slot and keep her arms at her sides. The rest of the second squad waited in the shuttle bay, fully armored and ready to drop, but Miranda lingered in the cockpit. Until the situation on the Collector ship demanded the second squad's presence, she remained in command of the _Normandy_. 

The ship could run itself without her and Shepard; between EDI and Joker, and the formal chain of command, enough structure remained to keep the ship's crew operating in some capacity. But a situation that required the second squad — 

Miranda exhaled sharply and refocused on the six red pinpricks creeping across the screen. Shepard's squad had almost completed their sweep of the _Kraliken_ , moving slowly toward the airlock connecting the turian vessel to the Collector ship. Two more red dots waited unseen in the shuttle, the crewmembers unlucky enough to pilot the shuttle, and then wait for Shepard's return. 

Seventy-seven minutes since boarding the _Kraliken_ , and nothing untoward had occurred. 

_Untoward_ , of course, did not mean _without cause for alarm._

"You know, you don't have to stand up here," said Joker, without turning from the display. "There's a whole CIC behind us where you can hang out, look all efficient and intimidating." When she didn’t reply, he said. "All right, fine, suit yours—"

"Jacob, what's your status?" Shepard's voice cut through Joker's, and Miranda felt the damn knot in her back loosen. Relieved, by the sound of someone's voice — too close to sentiment, too close by half. 

"Bridge is clear, Commander," Jacob replied. "No sign of any survivors. No bodies, either." 

"Copy that, Jacob," replied Shepard. "Proceed to the airlock. We're already en route. Garrus, status?" 

"Just cleared the medbay. No survivors or bodies here. On our way to you now." 

"Copy that." Shepard hesitated, and distant pops and clicks filled her brief silence. "You're the resident expert, Garrus. Anything sticking out?" 

"Nothing. Everything's in place, but that's no surprise." 

"Right. Even retreating, you guys keep your shit together." Jacob's red dot had almost reached Shepard's, with Zaeed's close behind. 

"I don't think this was a retreat," Vakarian said. Miranda's knowledge of turian subvocals was merely adequate, but she didn't think she misinterpreted the dry sarcasm in Vakarian's voice. Some things transcended species, she supposed. "If the ship had been boarded, the crew would have planted proximity charges to cover themselves. There would have been losses. The lifepods would have been prepped." 

"And they wouldn't have sent a standard distress call," Shepard added. "So it doesn't look like they were boarded." 

"It's like fuckin' Horizon all over again," Jack said. "Dishes still on the racks, beds made, but everyone's just gone." 

"Thank you for that comforting bit of insight," drawled Shepard. "All right, form up on me. EDI, finished decrypting that lock yet?" 

"The final cycle is decrypting. In the process, Shepard, I have discovered that not only does this ship use the same organic quantum encryption as the ship you encountered on Horizon, the signatures are an exact match." 

"Wonderful," Shepard said with a sigh, as Miranda straightened, a thin tendril of dread winding its way through her chest. The same ship. It was the same _bloody_ ship. "While we're on the subject, any chance this is the same ship that destroyed the first _Normandy_?" 

"The energy signatures are also an exact match," EDI replied. 

A beat of startled silence from the squad, then Jack and Zaeed swore. Even Vakarian pulled in a quick breath, audible over the comms, but Shepard stayed silent. No doubt seeing the fires again, and Alchera below her. And then — 

And then. Miranda shuddered, a tiny movement, but an unthinkable tell. _And then._

"The decryption cycle has finished," said EDI, over the background whispers of the squad. "The data node is six hundred meters from your current position."

"Nothing's ever easy," said Shepard. "Well, let's not wait around for the other shoe to drop. Radio silence unless you've got something to report. Move out!"  

*** 

Waiting did not come easily to Miranda. She could bide her time, she could be patient, but a sense of waste haunted her in the moments stillness was forced upon her. 

Miranda prided herself on economy and efficiency. Her operations routinely came in under budget, with no loose ends to tidy up later, no rumors to track to the source and eliminate. 

When the order came down for her to oversee Project Lazarus, she hadn't been surprised in the least. What other choice had there been? No one else could be trusted to bring Shepard back exactly as she was in life. 

The order — _exactly as she was_ — had been a relief. No ornamentation, no frills. Just the woman herself, in all her contrary, quicksilver forms: Shepard the soldier, Shepard the hero, Shepard the symbol, Shepard the rallying cry — and last of all, Shepard the martyr, and Shepard the disgraced. 

Miranda remembered seeing what was left of Commander Shepard, the pathetic collection of ragged flesh and black, greasy bones. She remembered sneering inwardly as Dr. T'Soni asked, no, _begged_ , Miranda to bring Shepard back. 

Sentiment. What a waste. 

But seeing that corpse, all thwarted potential, Miranda had thought _I could make you better, but instead I will make you just as you were, and that will be the greater accomplishment. I will bring you back, and it will be as if you were never dead._

Two years went into the rebuilding: nerves grown by the cluster in humid vats, muscles and skin stretched over racks before being spread over new, white bone. The first time Shepard's heart beat on its own, Miranda's team had cheered, and she had smiled and shaken hands all around — but she had felt a chill behind her breastbone. Now, she knew, came the difficult part. The body she had so painstakingly repaired was ready for its occupant again, but the question of whether that occupant could be recovered still remained. 

And so Miranda made a true study of Shepard. Forget dress sizes and the fact that Shepard ran a four-and-a-half minute mile — Miranda set herself the task of understanding the _woman._ She would know if the person she woke up was the _icon_ she needed, or a pale imitation. 

Interviews, personal vids, news clips; Miranda watched each one till she could recite them by heart, her voice rising and falling in Shepard's cadences. She knew what Shepard had eaten on the Citadel when she was fifteen; she knew that Shepard's first boyfriend was now a doctor on Terra Nova with a wife and three children. She even managed — not that it was _truly_ difficult in the end, Alliance security was a bad joke — to read the report of Shepard's N7 mission. The parts that hadn't been redacted and blacked out by some invisible hand, that is. 

She would resurface from the vids and reports with a growing sense of disproportion; she felt no closer to Shepard than she had when Shepard's body had been rolled in front of her on a gurney. The more she learned, the less she felt she _knew_. Shepard once spoke fluent Spanish; she went full biotic melee on a ship full of slavers on a dare; her crews were completely, fanatically loyal — and yet nothing _useful_ coalesced from all those facts _._ Miranda, who had held Shepard's lungs in her hands like two glistening flowers, could only think, _this is not a woman who can be controlled._

So: the control chip. 

_It will minimize risks. Even if we never activate it, having a failsafe is simply prudent planning. We should keep all our options open._

The Illusive Man's refusal had been polite, but emphatic: _As always, I appreciate your attention to detail, but Shepard must be exactly as she was. No changes._ When she pressed the issue, still unnerved by the half-dead body three floors above her, the Illusive Man watched her through clouds of blue smoke, and smiled. 

_You're too close to see the big picture_ , he said, like he was correcting a favorite but wayward child. Miranda bristled, but he cut her off with a sharp wave of his hand. _Shepard must not be changed. That's an order, Miranda._

So she gave him Shepard, the fulcrum for all his perfectly-laid plans, and she gave Shepard back her life. Everything that had been asked of her, Miranda gave, and never once in those two years had she pitied the woman slowly reforming under her scalpel. 

Never once had she cause to think anything might be watching her meticulous reconstruction, or that another pair of eyes had surveyed that ruined body and seen any potential in it. 

Miranda knew better now, ever so much better. 

***  

"You know," said Joker. "From here, it doesn't look that big." 

Miranda jolted out of her memories to find Joker staring up at her with a guileless smile. 

"What?" he asked, when she stared at him wordlessly. "They're just six dots on a screen, nothing we can do right now. Have to pass the time somehow." 

She tried to summon a reply — something worthy of the _contempt_ she felt for such an appallingly banal statement — but the words _nothing we can do_ struck her. There was a great deal she could do, if she had been _allowed_ to do it, but necessity had forced this inaction on her. She should be with Shepard, where her talents could be put to use, not standing around with a pilot who wanted to make _small talk_ while the galaxy's bloody best hope wandered through enemy territory. Especially when "enemy territory" contained the most illogical nightmare ever to be graced with the name of _myth._

"Yeah, it sucks," said Joker. He turned back to the display, his hands gripping the arms of his chair. "Getting left behind and all." 

"You assume a great deal, Mr. Moreau," she said, letting her gaze return to the display. 

"I _assume_ ," he shot back, "because I _know_. Comfortable chairs don't mean shit at times like this." He jerked his head toward the viewport, where the dull, jagged shape of the Collector ship hung against the darkness, the _Kraliken_ a thin silver dart beside its bulk. "Only thing I can do is get the hell out of here if things go to shit. How do you think that makes me feel?" 

She could guess, but empathy or not, Miranda didn't put it past Joker to be baiting her into a response for his own amusement. The fact that she didn't know was her own fault, for not taking the time or having the inclination to make a proper study of the pilot. No time now, no attention to spare. 

Shepard's voice rose from the comms, saving Miranda from having to form a reply. "All right, EDI, we've reached the data node. Initiating link." 

"Link established," EDI replied. "Beginning download." 

"Make it fast — I don't feel like pushing our luck by hanging out." 

"I always work at optimal capacity, Shepard." 

Shepard's sigh seemed on the edge of a laugh, but her voice remained neutral. "Understood, EDI." 

Silence again.  This time Miranda had the first of the data feeds to distract her from the frustration of remaining on the _Normandy._ And the data — 

"EDI, hold and zoom," she said, leaning forward with a hand braced on the back of Joker's chair. 

"Hey, watch the leather," Joker protested. "You want to geek out — Miranda?" 

Until Joker said her name, Miranda barely registered his presence; she looked down to find her hand clenched on the back of his chair, her fingers denting the leather. 

"Apologies," she murmured, turning her attention back to the images and code on the display. The cracking of the code would have to wait — the current priority was acquisition and download — but the image needed no translation, the simple spiral helix as familiar as the ship surrounding her. 

Far more sinister, however. 

"EDI, is this accurate?" she asked. "This DNA was pulled from Collector ship records?" 

"Yes, Miranda. Based on my calculations, the sample you are viewing was obtained approximately fifty thousand years ago." 

The prickle between Miranda's shoulders woke into full gooseflesh. Fifty thousand years. 

She released the chair and stepped back, keying herself into the squad comms. 

"Shepard, it's Miranda." 

"Dammit, what is it?" Shepard's taut, clipped enunciation made Joker flinch, but Shepard could have shouted her down in person, and as long as that image filled Miranda's vision, she wouldn't have blinked. 

"EDI's download has uncovered something…" Miranda reached for the right world, and found none. "Unsettling," she finished. 

Shepard swore, a murmur almost indistinguishable from the soft background static. "That supposed to shock me? We're almost done here, Miranda. Unless it's an emergency, it can wait till we get back to the _Normandy._ Radio silence." 

"EDI accessed DNA records," Miranda said. "The Collectors on that ship are — were — Protheans. Heavily modified, almost unrecognizable, but _Prothean_." 

Joker twisted in his chair, mouth open, then blew out a long breath and turned around, as silence filled the other end of the comms. A silence that lasted until Jack exploded. 

"These fuckers were _Prothean?_ What the fuck, Shepard?" 

Shepard didn't reply; Vakarian's voice rumbled through the comms instead. 

"Looks like we've got our link between the Collectors and the Reapers. Good thing, too. I was starting to worry this mission wasn't doomed enough." 

In spite of the implications, and the gooseflesh still covering her back, Miranda smiled. 

Shepard let out a sharp laugh. "Don't jinx us, Garrus. Though…" Her voice turned musing, and Miranda saw with piercing clarity the cool, faraway cast to Shepard's gaze. "…this does put the missing colonists into a new light." 

"Oh, for fuck's sake," growled Zaeed. 

Shepard went on as if she hadn't heard him, speaking over the murmurs of the squad. "And even if their focus is on humans, I doubt they'd pass up a turian ship it if happened by." 

The memory of the pods from Horizon — sticky with resin, the inside walls covered in scratch marks — collided with the empty shell of the _Kraliken_ in Miranda’s head. No, the Collectors left nothing to waste. Not even bodies. 

"EDI, where are we at?" asked Shepard. Her voice silenced the soft chorus of rustles from her squad, though Miranda heard the distant clicks and whirrs of weapons going live, no doubt in response to one of Shepard's silent hand signals. 

"Download at eighty percent." 

"Cut it. Too many coincidences for me — we've pushed our luck enough for one day." 

A part of Miranda, appalled at how casually Shepard aborted the mission, nearly protested: _when will we get a chance like this again? What if the information we need to win is in that last twenty percent? You're not seeing the big picture, Shepard._

The rest of her thought only two words: _get out._

"Stay focused, everyone," said Shepard. "Still got a long way back to the shuttle. All right, move!" 

Joker let out another long, shaky exhale. "The Collectors are _Protheans_ ," he said, scrubbing his face with both hands. "Mass extinction was a hell of a lot better than…whatever the Reapers did to them." 

"On that, Mr. Moreau, we're in complete agreement." She glanced out the viewport, eyes narrowed, and watched the Collector ship. There was no point in launching for the Collector ship now, if there ever had been. 

_No._ Miranda had not accepted this assignment to accept standing still and waiting for a chance to act. If she could not assist directly, she would find another way. 

"Joker," she said, noting with a quiet brush of satisfaction when the pilot turned around, frowning, no doubt astonished at her informality. "Bring us in. Maintain two thousand kilometers between us and the Collector ship, and be prepared to execute evasive maneuvers." 

Joker kept staring at her, his frown unchanging. She gave him a sliver of a smile. "You want me to bring the _Normandy_ in close," he said.

"I'm well aware Shepard told us to maintain a safe distance," she said. "But I, for one, would like to facilitate her departure. Don't you agree?" 

He let out a rough bark of a laugh, grinning and shaking his head. "Do I ever," he said. "Boy, do I ever." 

Cutting the distance between the _Normandy_ and the Collector ship by thousands of kilometers made little visual difference; the rough bulk of the Collector ship didn't move or respond to their approach, and its details were no easier to make out. The thought of being within reach of its weapons kept Miranda's heart racing, her pulse thick in her throat. She had seen the first _Normandy_ , how irrevocably gutted the ship had been. She did not plan on joining it. 

Neither did she plan on _waiting_ any longer. She would assist, however she was able, and deal with Shepard's temper later. 

"Never thought I'd be here again," Joker murmured, his hands hovering over his display. "In weapons range of those assholes." 

"It won't be long," Miranda replied. "The squad is almost there.” 

As if it wanted to mock her optimism, a suit proximity alarm wailed through the comms, and the display in front of her lit up with a swarm of blue marks, closing in on Shepard’s position. Fifty meters’ worth of warning was all the squad had. 

“Incoming!” yelled Shepard. “Garrus, Zaeed, they’re dropping on from above us -- see if you can take out their barriers before they land. 

“On it!” replied a rough voice, the static too thick for Miranda to tell who had responded. 

“The rest of you -- Warp and Shockwave, break their sightlines!” 

_Yes,_ Miranda thought. _Biotics disrupt them_. She tucked the information away for later, for Mordin and experimentation. No time now to investigate.

The squad broke its tight formation and spread itself into a loose arrowhead -- no doubt with Shepard at its head. 

“ _Fire_!” 

Miranda heard each command as it was shouted, every shot and every biotic detonation; she noted with clinical, precise detachment how quickly each of Shepard’s orders were followed, how the squad winnowed down the swarm to sparse blue marks on the display. 

She saw the screen darken again, another swarm bearing down on the squad. In answer, the red dots retreated toward the opposite edge of the screen, with steady steps and unbreaking gunfire. 

_Suit cameras,_ Miranda thought through a swell of frustration, her skin itching with the desire to act. _I'll requisition them, and Shepard will bloody well sign before she does anything else._

"Thane, on your ten!" A distant shearing sound cut through the comms, and then a dull, dry rasp echoed far in the background. "Looks like this ship isn't quite as dead as we thought it was." 

"Good thing we decided to make our exit now," said Vakarian over the gunfire, just as calm and unwinded as Shepard. Miranda glared at the comms, the now-familiar notch slashing between her brows. _I know you made it out of an erupting volcano_ , she thought waspishly, _but you could at least pretend this situation was worth some concern._

"Sounds just like old times," Joker broke in. "They wouldn't be having any fun if they weren't getting shot at."

Miranda grimaced. "EDI," she said. "Scan ahead of Shepard's position for a secondary exit. It appears the commander will need an alternate rendezvous point." 

"Scanning now." 

Time dilated — Miranda knew less than fifteen seconds went by till EDI replied, but each one weighed on her back, a little heavier than the last. 

"There is a docking bay located four hundred meters beyond Shepard's current position," reported EDI. "I have relayed this information to her and to the shuttle pilots." 

"Excellent," said Miranda, sour-mouthed and no more reassured that her efforts had been of any assistance. "Thank you, EDI." 

“All right, everyone -- we’ve got a new exit. Keep up suppressive fire. Let’s move!” shouted Shepard.

A handful of seconds ticked by. Miranda's eyes burned, too focused on the squad to blink. Three hundred meters. She ached to move, to fight, to _shoot_ , to cut and hew and break. Anything but this ghastly _listening_ , this impotent, passive uselessness. Her comms chimed with a message from the shuttle pilot, reporting they had reached the rendezvous, but the information did nothing to calm her. They were where they needed to be; Shepard and her squad were not. Miranda’s hand twisted against the leather chair, but Joker made no comment. 

"The hell?" said Jacob as the gunfire slowed, then stopped, his voice congested. "My nose is bleeding." 

_Now is not the time to whine about bumps and bruises_ , Miranda thought, frustration flaring hot in her before she remembered Shepard crawling out of the cave, blood caked under her nose and around her mouth. 

_If there's anything you're capable of doing_ , she told Nor, not even sure if the spirit could hear, or would listen, _hurry._

"Movement up ahead," said Shepard. Joker jumped at the sound of her voice, and even Miranda felt her hands tighten in response. "Hold fire till my signal." 

"Shepard," said Vakarian, his voice unexpectedly thin. "Haestrom." 

That single word gave Miranda enough warning to prepare herself, one hand braced against Joker's chair, though the grating roar still cracked and chattered at her ears. The comms diminished volume, not menace. 

Chaos, complete chaos: shouts, curses, the dull boom of a Warp being fired off., and above it all, the roar, stretching on and on, scraped out of unspeakable throats. Fire, the harsh animal smell of fear, pain in every nerve, and panic. An experienced squad, with shared years to protect them, would have struggled against the onslaught. This squad had weeks, and nothing but a mission to tie them together. 

"What the _shit_ ," Joker whispered, cringing away from the noise. To his credit, his hands stayed steady over his display, even as what little Miranda could see of his face twisted. 

"Seriously, what the _shit._ " 

Miranda faced the viewport, the sourness in her mouth turned bitter. She could feel the noise scratching at her ears, crawling into her head, thin feelers unfurling. It vibrated along her nerves and jarred loose aches from old injuries long healed, burns and cuts and bruises rising out of scar tissue that had disappeared years before. And she felt _small_ , so close to being nothing at all, a tiny mote tumbling over and over —

"Focus!" Shepard shouted over the noise. "Don't let them touch you! Jack — Shockwave, now!" 

"This fucking _noise —_ " 

"I said _now!_ " 

The noise hitched, breaking like fragile crystal, and in the momentary calm, Miranda heard the snap and boom of two separate Shockwaves — and then Shepard _howled_ , a bloody, full-throated sound, and the roar of a Charge filled the comms with static. 

Thirty seconds. Thirty seconds of static, with no shouts or gunfire to tell Miranda if the squad survived. Thirty seconds of — 

"Shepard, what the _fuck_ ," said Jack. "What the _fuck_ was that shit?" 

A low, ragged laugh floated through the comms, a sound that sent an uneasy shiver through Miranda. Shepard sounded like no living creature should, bleak and old, a soldier too exhausted for dread or worry. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Shepard said, punctuating her sentence with another weary laughs. "Let's keep moving." 

"Shepard," said Vakarian. The subvocals in his voice remained nearly opaque, but a rough edge caught Miranda's ear. "Behind you." 

At that moment, Miranda would have killed for a suit camera, her mind speeding through an ethical debate on having EDI hack Vakarian's visor, just so she could _see_ as they saw, her eyes taking in the same hallways and vast rooms as Shepard, but a quick intake of breath — Shepard's gasp — erased the thought. 

"Goddamn," said Shepard, her voice still exhausted, but then she laughed, as bright as a bird call. "Hold there, let me see your hands." 

_What are you talking about?_ Miranda thought, realizing an instant later the correct question was _who are you to talking to_ , and looking away from the display to find Joker staring at her, bemused and open-mouthed. 

The survivor. Miranda blinked. How quickly she’d forgotten them and given them up, to focus all her attention on Shepard. 

"Name and rank," said Shepard, her voice calm, none of her weariness evident. "Eyes up, soldier." 

"Please." The whisper came from almost too far away to be picked up by the comms, just a slight stirring of the air. "I just want to get out of here." A quiet noise, almost a sob, followed the sentence. "I don't — they're still here, please don't make me stay. I —" 

“Holy shit, they’re alive,” said Joker, thunderstruck. He laughed and tipped his head back against his chair, and Miranda found herself tempted to join in, tension leaking out of her muscles, relief making her giddy. They’d _won_ , as much as this mission had let them so far. “Damn.” 

“I --” The survivor’s voice trailed off into a whimper. “I can’t…”

"Name and rank," Vakarian repeated, his voice cold where Shepard's had been almost gentle. "She gave you an order, soldier." 

"M-Maril Kovalan," came the answer. "I'm not — I don't have — oh, spirits…" 

"Kovalan," said Vakarian. "I knew a Kovalan once, at C-Sec." He kept talking, names that Miranda didn't recognize or care about, and the distant, quiet whimpers and shallow breaths began to calm. What luck they’d just happened to have a turian on the squad -- Shepard’s luck, she supposed, and surprised herself by smiling.

“Miranda, make sure Chakwas is prepped for another dextro patient when we arrive,” said Shepard, then paused. “Somewhere secure. And get the whole squad together -- this is going to be one hell of a debrief.” 

_Of that_ , Miranda thought as she confirmed the orders, _I have no doubt._


	43. Chapter 43

On the list of things she could have lived without, Shepard put being on the receiving end of Collector biotics somewhere below "cleaning out acid burns", but not by much. 

The inside of her armor stank: sour sweat and melted ceramics, the electricity-gone-wrong scent of a half-overloaded amp, and the leftover burned smell from when she took one of Harbinger's blasts full-on. Her suit filters worked overtime, but the smell lingered, hot and itchy along the inside of her sinuses. She'd smelled worse over the years — the Thorian came to mind — but this smell, in particular, was impossible to ignore. 

She adjusted her grip on the young turian's shoulders as the squad passed from one narrow, dank passage to the next, skirting frozen piles of rubble and broken wiring. “Jacob, make sure you get a good scan off that,” she said, with a nod toward the pile. “Might be useless, but I’ll take anything.”

“Yes ma’am,” replied Jacob. Soft orange light reflected briefly off the icy floor and walls around her, then faded. “Scan uploaded.” 

“Good.” Shepard pulled Maril closer against her side, and tried to ignore the smell.  _At least it's a distraction from the headache_ , she thought, a little rueful.

Yes, the headache — the depressingly familiar headache, needling into her temples. Because the Collectors with biotics weren't bad enough — the revenants _had_ to put in an appearance. 

Top it all off with a side of abandoned turian ship and half-crazy turian survivor — even by her phenomenally abysmal standards, today was absolute shit.

"I can take her," said Garrus. By how low he pitched his voice, Shepard could tell he'd keyed into her comms alone. If she hadn't been so damn beat, she'd have smiled. "You look like you're about to drop, Shepard." 

_I thought you’d have more to say after staring at my ass for the past hour,_ Shepard thought. She couldn’t deny the appeal; Maril could barely put one foot in front of the other without whimpering, so Shepard had been supporting more of the turian’s weight every meter they covered."If you're paying that much attention to me, Garrus, you're not doing your job," she replied, keeping her own voice light. "Eyes front." 

"Oh, my eyes _are_ front _,"_ Garrus said, mild and sly, just a shade short of flirty. "It just so happens that I'm on your six, so watching _you_ is part of my job. Let me take her. It'll be easier without the height difference." 

Shepard couldn't argue with that; her armor put her at almost six feet, but Maril topped that by another five inches, and her shoulder already protested the added strain with a slowly-spreading ache. With the headache, she couldn't afford another handicap. 

She stopped midstep, as gently as she could to avoid jostling Maril. The turian slumped against her, mumbling something over the shared comm channel, and didn't protest as Garrus eased her off Shepard and against his side. The rest of the squad kept walking, though Jack sent a frown Shepard's way through her visor. Not, Shepard thought, as a preface to an insult, but as a question: _need any help_? 

Shepard shook her head as she took Garrus' place in the configuration, and Jack nodded and turned back. Eyes front. 

_I may have a squad yet_ , Shepard thought, rolling her shoulder as she walked. _Nothing like the threat of painful, bizarre, and imminent death to bring people together_. 

There would be time for testing that hypothesis later; now, she had to focus on getting everyone out alive — nothing new there — and on the best response if anyone chose to point out that some of the Collectors looked and acted a little _different_ from all the rest. 

She could just come out with the truth. _Good morning, everyone_. _Today's briefing includes investigating the possibility of merc activity and also the big reveal that we have a supernatural mascot here on the_ Normandy _. Don't be nervous if you see her haunting dark corners, but please let me know if she invades the restrooms._

She snorted to herself, then winced as the headache brightened, and sent sharp, searching fingers deep into her head. Searching for Akuze, for Alchera — or this time, would they dredge up some forgotten memory, and surprise her? Better not to think about it, and jinx herself. She checked the clips in her shotgun by feel, and focused past Garrus and Maril's helmets, down to the dark end of the passage. 

 

*** 

 

The farther Shepard went into the Collector ship, the more it decayed around her.

Entire sections of the ship had, to all appearances, been abandoned, and left to rot in lonely, isolated splendor. And _splendor_ was the right word for it: entire floors flooded with a honey-colored liquid, brittle strands of ice that shattered as the squad's feet shook the loose floor panels, and thin, red-black vines that covered the walls and shriveled away the moment someone shone a light on them. 

_Whatever else I think about them_ , she thought as they passed through a vast, pod-studded cavern, its ceiling lost to darkness, _the Collectors don't think small._

How could they? The Reapers didn't either, and now that she had a straight line connecting them to the Collectors, the size of the Collector ship didn't surprise her. 

The colonies in the Terminus presented no challenge for the Collectors: easy prey, weak animals cut off from the main herd. Cut off by choice, yes, but too far to cry for help when the swarms spread through the settlements. How many colonists had been taken while she slept? Millions?

_Just look around; that last hall you were in held a hundred thousand pods, easy._

Before she could finish the thought, a sudden stop at the front of the squad caught her attention. For the past hour, she'd taken up the rear with Zaeed, and moved Jacob and Thane up to the flanks. Now Jack and Garrus had paused up ahead, their helmets tilted together. Kovalan still slumped against Garrus, unmoving, unresisting. 

"Garrus?" Shepard said, over the squad comms. "Jack? Report." 

"We're gonna need to find another way, Shepard," said Jack. "Floor's all sunk in, and that sticky shit is everywhere." 

After a moment's pause, Shepard left Zaeed at the rear and came up behind Garrus. Sure enough, the walls were coated with the resin — the resin, she realized with a nasty wrench, that coated the inside of the pods — and thick droplets oozed down through the hole in the floor. Crouching down, she flicked on her omnitool and shone the orange light past the crumbled edge. 

The hole went down, and down, and down, straight into the dead heart of the ship. Shepard's stomach plummeted as she leaned a few inches farther and activated her omnitool's camera. 

"EDI," she said, squinting to see just how far down the hole went, "we're going to need an alternate route." 

"Calculating. Uploading to your omnitools now." 

Shepard registered the ping of incoming data distantly; the light of her omnitool had reflected off something far below, and she braced her feet to ease forward to make it out. Her heel caught on a piece of debris as she shifted, sending it spinning over the edge and down the hole. 

Something splashed. 

_Shit_ , Shepard thought, the needle in her spine flaring hot and then subsiding. A few flooded levels weren't anything to worry about so long as the ship's gravity held — she'd fought her way through worse zero-g environments before — but the dark water below didn't present a simple annoyance. 

Behind her, someone shifted, and a low, reedy whine echoed over the comms. "No, not here. I want to go _home._ " 

Garrus hushed Maril, muttering too low for the translator to pick up, and Maril’s whine faded to a faint wheeze, almost hidden by static.

_Focus, Shepard._ She punched in a string of commands on her omnitool, then bit the tip of her tongue to stop a hiss from leaking out of her mouth. _Shit,_ she thought again. _Shit, shit,_ shit. 

The temperature inside the Collector ship had been dropping steadily since it had lost power. Currently, it registered at negative two degrees Celsius, with the drop rate increasing geometrically every hour. The ship's stone exterior had managed to slow the process, but hard vacuum would eventually win out over the last of the insulation. A few more days, and the ship would be too cold to restart the engines, or salvage any equipment. The outer layers of the ship would cool to permanent non-functional temperatures, with the chill working its inexorable way inside. 

So why the hell was the air in the hole nearly twenty degrees cooler than the air in the passage? 

_You already know the answer_ , Shepard thought, resisting the urge to run. Running wouldn’t help her here. Better to go slow, better to try and escape notice. 

Dark water, cold air, and stone walls. The heart of the Collector ship — a Sarcophagus.

"Got something, Shepard?" asked Garrus. His voice held no hint of strain; he sounded calm, even amused, but that had to be for the benefit of the squad, not for her. He was still using the shared comm channel, a not-so-subtle warning. Translated, he was asking, _do I need to worry?_

Revenants, the resin, and now a Sarcophagus. She could have torn her hair out by the roots, slammed her head into the walls. She should have _known._ The Reapers did nothing in half-measures, and if there was one Sarcophagus, there were others. She just hadn't expected one under her feet. 

_More fool me. Time to haul ass._

"Maybe, Garrus." She kept her voice light, focused but not urgent, as she stood. Her hands did not shake, she did not waver, but oh, _god_ , she wanted to scream. "But it'll wait till we get back to the _Normandy_. Let's move." 

Her intuition could be wrong. The warning flare of the needle could have been a false alarm. 

_In another life, maybe_. She took point at the head of the squad, with Garrus and Jack fanning out on her flanks and Jacob, Zaeed, and Thane closing in behind her. Some of her urgency — the instinct telling her to _run_ , to put the yawning hole as far behind them as possible as fast as possible — had telegraphed itself to the squad, in spite of her efforts to keep it out of her voice and posture. No one complained when she set a hard pace, as close to a jog as they could get with Garrus still supporting Maril. No one talked either — a smart decision, considering they all needed their breath for keeping up — and the only sound was the grit of their footsteps through the rubble. 

_Am I letting fear cloud my judgment?_ she thought. The passage ahead of the squad narrowed, half-caved in with circuits dangling from the decaying wall, and forced them to pass through single-file through the chokepoint. _Less than a month ago, I thought I was crazy, and now I’m seeing monsters everywhere. This could just be a dead ship._

_Or I could be right. No harm in planning for the worst-case scenario._

She debated keying into the private channel Garrus had used earlier — to check on Maril, to check on him — but decided against it, and increased her speed. He would tell her if Maril needed to stop. But part of her longed for contact, beyond any practical purpose. Even if she couldn’t touch Garrus, she wanted the reminder that something existed beyond her armor, and the doubts circling in her head. 

_What if I’m compromised?_ she asked herself. 

_You’ve been compromised since you woke up in Miranda’s lab_ , came the answer, implacable and cold.

She picked up the pace, as fast as she thought she could risk with Garrus still supporting Maril. Three hundreds meters and two levels until they reached the shuttle. Almost there. 

"Bloody hell," Zaeed grumbled under his breath, but no one replied, and he fell silent after the single outburst. 

Shepard half-wished someone would start bitching about the run, or about the smell that leaked through their suits' filters — anything to distract her from the the thought of the first Sarcophagus towering over her head, or the one behind her, still and silent under her feet. But they weren't silent, were they? They were — waiting. Sleeping. Resting in preparation for…what, exactly?

What hid within the stone? 

_Someone, say something_ , she thought. Her thigh started to burn along the healed gash. _Anything. Just so I don’t have to think about --_

"Shepard," interrupted Miranda, her voice tinny with distance. "We've run into a problem." 

_I swear to god, I was kidding._ Shepard held back a sigh, the skin on her back already prickling. The needle in her spine smoldered. "Color me surprised, Miranda. What is it?" 

"The _Kraliken_ is powering up its FTL drive _._ " 

"It's _what?_ " Shepard stopped dead, half-turning to face the rest of the squad. The light reflecting off their visors obscured their gazes, but she felt their eyes on her, fierce and alert. "Miranda, that ship is dead. No power to any systems whatsoever." 

All that time she and her squad had been slipping through the Collector ship, had the Collectors had been seeding themselves into the _Kraliken_? To what purpose? 

Better not to ask. Better just to _act_. Anything touched by the Collectors was blighted, and had to die. 

"The power supply appears to be coming from a location within the Collector ship itself, approximately one hundred seventy-five meters below your position," Miranda replied, her voice precise but taut as steel wire. “EDI is attempting to pinpoint the source --”

"Don't bother," Shepard snapped, as the first burst of adrenaline washed through her bloodstream, her doubts melting away. The damned hole in the floor. The damned Sarcophagus.  "Life signs. Are there life signs on the _Kraliken_?" 

Maril moaned again, and Garrus hushed her, as quietly as before, but his voice thrummed with brittle anxiety. Shepard waited a beat, then keyed the _Normandy_ again. "Miranda, I asked you a question. Are there life signs on the _Kraliken_?" 

" _Affirmative, Shepard._ _EDI can't get an accurate reading through the radiation bleed from the Collector ship, but we estimate —"_

"Fuck me," Jack muttered, nasal through her helmet. "This is bullshit." Jacob growled his agreement. 

Shepard shifted her shotgun to the crook of her arm, suddenly, horribly conscious of the weight of decision on her back. She had one last question, one last way to delay — and selfishly, she took it. 

"Do you detect Collector life signs or energy signatures?" Shepard gnawed at her tongue, her cheek, as she waited for the answer. _Don't make me fire on turians, no matter how fucked up they are_ , she thought. 

" _Affirmative,_ " said Miranda a few seconds later, her relief clear over the comms. " _Detecting energy signatures identical to the seeker swarms encountered on Horizon._ " 

That made the decision a little easier, at least for the immediate future. Shepard ground her teeth into her tongue, and blew out a sharp breath. 

"Miranda, that ship does not spin up. Do you read me?" 

No time for _how,_ or _why_. Miranda hesitated, and Shepard read her thoughts in the slight silence. _It's a turian ship, there are still too many unanswered questions, we need to investigate first, how will we explain this_? 

_Damned if I know_ , Shepard thought. "Miranda, _do you read me_?" When she looked up, Garrus had turned to face her. Maril still slumped against him, her helmet lolling on his shoulder. Shepard waited — for a signal that he understood, for him to protest — but he stayed silent behind his visor. 

" _I read you, Shepard,_ " Miranda said. 

"Open fire." Shepard caught the tip of her tongue between her teeth."I take full responsibility," she added, needlessly. A Cerberus ship destroying a turian cruiser — no amount of goodwill from the Council would save her. Then again, she only had to worry about it if she made it off this ship alive. 

" _Understood_ , _Commander_ ," Miranda replied. " _Opening fire_." 

Shepard spared a glance at the squad, who still watched her, faceless and silent. "All right, _move_! Double time!" 

Now, they sprinted, with Jack helping Garrus guide Maril down the corridor. A backward glance after fifteen meters told Shepard they had slung her arms over their shoulders, and carried her weight between them as they ran, clumsy and stumbling over the rubble. 

Under the squad’s feet, the floor shuddered and groaned. Dust floated down from the shaking walls and settled on their armor, and — yes, far behind them, something _screamed._

_Two down_ , Shepard thought, her thigh no longer burning but sending up bursts of agony, cramping under her armor. The thought was wildly optimistic; the scream kept going, reedy and far away, winding higher and higher until it passed out of their hearing. _It’s dying._

Miranda's voice rang over the shared comms as Jack glared at Shepard. "The _Kraliken_ has been destroyed, Commander." 

"Copy that, Miranda," she said, breathing hard. "We're a hundred meters out from the shuttle. Make sure the core's spun up, I don't want to —" 

The floor convulsed under them, hidden support beams shrieking in protest before snapping, and the floor gave way.

"Shepard!" someone yelled, their voice too ragged for her to make out who it was. She fell, twisting in midair, scrabbling for a handhold, and then she hit the surface of the water. 

_Cold —!_

 

*** 

 

Garrus came awake slowly, conscious only of something soft underneath his back, and warm light on his face. He opened his eyes carefully, letting them adjust, then started when he realized the weight of his visor and the accompanying silent readouts were both missing.

"Where —" he tried to say, pushing up on his elbows. The room around him wavered, and his head ached, long in his skull and under his fringe — a concussion, no doubt, and a bad one. But how had he gotten it, and how had he ended up here, wherever _here_ was? 

"Doctor Chakwas, he's awake." Heavy-booted footsteps echoed on the tiles, and Miranda's face floated into his line of vision, her expression cold and iron-hard. "Garrus, please, lie still. You've been —" 

"What the hell happened?" he demanded, swatting away her hand when she gripped his arm and pushed him down on his back again. His head pounded viciously as he tried to focus; a glance to his left, and he saw Jacob unconscious in the bed next to his, his neck and left arm stabilized in a clear cast. And to his right, a bloody Jack, wrapped in a blanket and a mug clasped between her hands. 

"You look as shitty as I feel, Vakarian," she said, her voice as rough as his. Her right cheek was so swollen it had pressed her eye closed, and the eye that met his was bloodshot and glassy. "Serves us right for sticking on Shepard's six." Her voice cracked on the last word, and she broke off into a fit of wet, rattling coughing. 

Miranda abandoned him and turned to Jack, pulling the mug out of her hands and gently — by anyone's standards — pushed her down to the bed. "I'm quite willing to sedate you both," she said. "Now _lie down_ , Jack." 

"Cheerleader," Jack said, the word slurred by her swollen cheek, but she lay back and closed her eyes without further comment. 

By the time Miranda turned back to Garrus, his vision had steadied, though his headache hadn't lessened, and he saw the clear lines of exhaustion and worry on her face: a slash between her eyebrows, faint shadows beneath her eyes. His gut twisted sourly as he realized she wore her heavy armor, with both weapons still hanging from their magnetic strips. "Will I need to sedate you?" Miranda asked. "Or are you feeling cooperative?" 

"I'm —" Garrus shook his head, hissing when the movement made him dizzy. "Spirits. The Collector ship." 

The memories came rushing back, murky and distorted, like he saw them through a thick, dirty pane of glass. Shepard ordering the _Kraliken_ 's destruction, Kovalan's weight against his shoulder, her soft whimpers if he moved too quickly, the scream chasing them through the corridors. 

The floor collapsing, and Shepard disappearing without a sound through the gaping hole that opened under them. 

"The Collector ship," Miranda said, her voice neutral. "Garrus, your injuries --." 

"Where's Shepard?" he asked. 

Jack let out a nasty, exhausted laugh, then rolled onto her side, her back to Miranda and Garrus. "Question of the fucking year," she said. "You wanna take this, cheerleader?" 

"We lost contact with Shepard," Miranda said, meeting his eyes without an outward flinch when he jolted, and half-rose off the bed. She planted a hand on his chest — someone, sometime, had removed his armor, and a far-off, rational voice made a note to find it later — and kept him from sitting up. 

"Approximately three hours ago," she began, "after the destruction of the _Kraliken_ , the Collector ship experienced an extreme power surge of unknown origin. We lost contact with the squad moments later, and detected a series of explosions deep in the ship's interior. As we could still detect the squad's — your — life signs, thanks to your omnitool beacons. I was able to deploy the secondary squad on a rescue mission."

Jack laughed again, twice as nasty now. "Nice lecture. You gonna be the ship's new AI?" But her tone lacked any real bite, and she huddled deeper into her blanket as Garrus turned the words over in his head. 

_Where was Shepard_? 

Call him selfish, call him stupidly optimistic, but Garrus was convinced that if he'd been hurt, Shepard would have been at his side when he woke, if only to yell at him for taking stupid risks. 

_Or_ , he thought, as he clenched his hands, _she'd be in the next bed, as beat up as I am_. 

"Where's Shepard?" he asked again, after the last echoes of Miranda's voice had faded and the only sounds in medbay were the faint beeps of monitoring instruments. 

Miranda rubbed her temple, her eyes sliding closed for a moment. "She's still on the ship, Garrus," she said. The circles under her eyes looked much darker, and Garrus wondered just how bad that rescue mission had been. Right now, he didn't have the heart to ask. Shepard was _still on the ship_. 

"She's alive," Miranda went on, but before Garrus could feel any relief, she added, "as far as we know. Her omnitool beacon is still active, and still recording life signs, but the signal itself is erratic. EDI can't pinpoint her location. All we know is that she's in the core of the ship." 

Garrus shut his eyes, too bone-weary to keep his head up. His headache was only the worst pain he felt; his right elbow felt loose and numb, a sure sign that he'd broken it in the fall, and either Miranda or Chakwas had set it while he was unconscious. And that didn't even begin to touch on the aches, and bruises, and lacerations that covered every inch of his body. 

"In the ship," he said, his voice thin in his ears, the lower subvocals gone. The image of Shepard crouched beside the hole, her omnitool held out over empty space, lingered in his mind. Utter dark, surrounded by rubble and ice. Hungry -- 

_Stop it_ , he told himself. _Don't even think it._

"The Collector ship has shown no sign of activity since," Miranda said. "We’re returning to the ship to rescue Shepard, now that you’re all stabilized." 

More than he could ever express, Garrus was grateful Miranda didn't say _retrieve._ "I'll go with you," he said, trying to sit up again.

"Like hell you will," Miranda said, without heat. "You're in no condition to use the bathroom by yourself, much less mount a rescue mission in hostile territory. Besides —" she pushed him down with both hands, her eyes flashing. "I need you here, for when we bring Maril Kovalan out of sedation." 

"Sedation?" Garrus said, inanely. "What did you do to her?" 

"She had a seizure as soon as we got her onto the _Normandy._ In her condition, with the injuries she sustained in the fall, more stress on her system might have been fatal," said Chakwas, speaking for the first time. Garrus hadn't even seen her at first; craning his head past the curve of Miranda's shoulder, he saw her standing over the farthest bed, hair in place and uniform spotless, but with the same exhaustion as Miranda's riding her face. "I've sedated her for the time being, but she needs better care than I can provide with our current resources." 

"Because a Cerberus ship couldn't be bothered to stock dextro medical supplies," Garrus spat, past anger. The faint taste of acid filled his throat. Shepard stumbling, Shepard falling out of his sight. 

_Over the hills and far away,_ he thought, before he could distract himself. His gut wrenched, his neck went cold. 

"I don't have time for this," Miranda snapped. "The squad is prepped and we need to deploy. Officer Vakarian, you will remain in medbay until such time as Doctor Chakwas or I release you. Sedate him if you need to," she said, this time to Chakwas, and turned without another word. As the door to medbay opened, Garrus saw the second squad stand as Miranda approached them, Zaeed and Thane standing with Samara, Mordin, and Grunt. 

"They suffered superficial injuries only, Garrus," she said, flicking off her omnitool. "They were able to assist with your rescue, and insisted on returning with Miranda —" 

"Right," Garrus said, still inwardly protesting that he could go, he’d survived worse and kept fighting, knowing the whole time it was pure selfishness driving him, and the desperate need to see Shepard safe and alive again. 

_You'd slow them down, Vakarian,_ said his rational mind. _Your depth perception's shot, and you couldn't hit a pyjak at two meters with your hands shaking like this. You're no good to her like this._

Rational or not, it changed nothing. Shepard needed him, and he was trapped on the _Normandy_. 

"Now," said Chakwas, her features settling into what Garrus thought was sympathy — but the expression was too sly, too reluctantly amused to be that one emotion. "Lie still while I run a few scans. I don't like the look of the bruising along your ribs. You're all lucky to have come out as unscathed as you did," she added as she leaned over him. Her omnitool display flashed into existence, and Garrus shut his eyes against the glow. "You and Jack got the worst of it, though Mr. Taylor's arm will take at least a week to heal, even with ossification treatments." 

If this was Chakwas' attempt to make him feel better for being forced to stay behind, it was a crappy one. Garrus opened his mouth to tell her that — in more diplomatic terms — but her gloved hand brushed his bare wrist. A slight pressure, a tiny pinch as the ampule pierced his skin, and telltale numbness spread through his arm. 

"Dammit," he muttered, his mouth already slow and sticky. "Doctor, you —" 

Sleep washed away the rest of his sentence. 

 

*** 

 

Medbay was nearly silent when Garrus opened his eyes, and all the lights were dimmed; the privacy curtain was down, so no noise filtered in from the mess. None of the other patients moved as he shifted on his bed. Jack snored lightly, her face turned to the ceiling. 

The sedative had long worn off. The only sign he'd been given one at all was a gritty, salty taste in the back of his throat, and a feeling like padding had been stuffed between him and his headache. He blinked at the ceiling, grateful to Chakwas for keeping the lights low, distantly angry at her for the casual use of the sedative. Without it, he'd have been in the cockpit, annoying the hell out of Joker, watching for any sign that Shepard was safe, that Shepard was coming home. That she was still alive. It wouldn't have been helping, but he would have felt — 

_Be honest, Vakarian_. _You'd have felt better. You'd almost be able to pretend you were doing something._

He sat up slowly. Chakwas couldn't complain if he went looking for a drink of water to clear the taste out of his throat, and if he took a shower to work out some of the knots in his arms and back, she couldn't complain about that either. After all, she wasn't here to play babysitter. 

As for Miranda's order — to hell with it.

Garrus eased his feet to the floor slowly, grimacing as he realized he was still wearing his undersuit and the sour, stale smell of his sweat reached his nose. Getting in a shower had just become his top priority. Then, he'd find his spare armor, and some water, and make his way to the cockpit. He didn't know how much time had passed, but Shepard should be — they must have — 

"She's not gone," said Maril Kovalan. 

Garrus froze, his neck prickling and his hands closing into fists. His first instinct was to twist around, and face her, but something in Kovalan's voice triggered a secondary reaction. No subvocals — but more than that, no pheromones. No fear, no confusion, nothing. 

_Easy_ , he warned himself. _Go slow._

"The doctor?" he whispered, conscious of Jack and Jacob. "She's probably in the mess. I can get her, if you want." He turned slowly as he rose off his bed, making sure his hands stayed at his sides, and that the dim light caught his face. No doubt Kovalan could tell he was a turian, just by smell, but he wasn't taking any chances. Even a familiar shape could cast unusual shadows. 

Jacob muttered to himself as he slept, shifting and frowning, then fell silent. For a long moment, no one moved, and under the background noise of the medical scanners, Garrus heard the steady rush of his pulse. 

Then Kovalan sat up, skinny legs stretched out in front of her on the bed, and turned her head to meet his gaze. Garrus felt a sick wrench in his chest; she was so damn _young_ , maybe seventeen at most, and his hopes that this wasn't Paralus Kovalan's sister shattered. She wore the same Cipritine marks, bold slashes of white on her narrow face, and her eyes were the same burnished gold. 

"She's not gone," Kovalan repeated, in her flat, childish voice. "She fell down and down, but she's not gone, and they don't know why. Down and down." She lifted one hand, palm facing the bed, and let it fall limp to her mattress, without looking anywhere but his face. "You know why," she said. 

Garrus’ throat closed to a dry, thin pinhole. "Lie down, Kovalan," he said. "I'll get Chakwas. You need to rest." He made sure to choose the formal pronouns, a difference no translator would pick up, but a turian would hear the encoded message: respect for the hierarchy. He hadn’t made a request.

Kovalan stared at him, then smiled, her mandibles flaring wide. "You do know," she said, swinging her legs off the side of the bed and stepping feather-light toward him. "You know why she tastes the way she does. What a _will_ she has. None of the others had it. None of the others tasted — " 

"Stand down," Garrus said, his subvocals thrumming a warning that filled medbay with their echoes. Jack stirred on her bed, turning to her back, but Garrus ignored her. His attention narrowed to Kovalan, to her smile and to the horrible, crooked angle of her left leg as she walked toward him. Broken in two places. She should have been in agony, painkillers or not, but she kept smiling, and kept inching toward him. 

"She killed the ship," said Kovalan. "She killed it but it doesn't matter. There are more ships, there are always more ships. There'll be other crews too, once they go into the rocks." She paused, one step away, with her left leg bent under her, and cocked her head. "They all go into the rocks," she said, considering, unblinking. "You will too, you all will." Her mandibles fluttered, a gesture that in any other context would have been flirty, and only made Garrus feel a deep, bitter disgust. "They all did," she added, her hand rising and falling at her side.

"What happened to your crew?" Garrus asked, scrabbling mentally for a plan. "Kovalan, _report!_ " 

The sharp crack of his voice woke Jack; she sat up in bed, swearing under her breath and rubbing her eyes with her fists. "Vakarian, you wanna shut the -- what the _fuck_ is going on?" 

"What happened to your crew?" he demanded, closing the distance between himself and Kovalan. He steeled himself, the implications of what he was about to say staggering, and said, "Did they go into the rocks?" 

Kovalan nodded, her smile widening, grotesquely pleased. "Yes," she said, and then her smile dropped away, leaving her face completely bare of any expression. "I did too." 

Garrus had time to think _oh, crap_ and nothing else before Kovalan leapt. 

"You _all_ will go in, you all go in, you all fall, you all will go into the rocks," Kovalan sing-songed, her voice high and strained as she scratched at his bare hide. "And you, you know why she can fall, you know why she tastes the way she does, why she smells like the dead —" 

Skinny as she was, Kovalan slammed into Garrus with enough force to push him back against Chakwas’ desk, the impact sending splinters of his headache down his neck and back. He twisted awkwardly, trying to catch Kovalan’s bony wrists as she fell on top of him. Her hands clawed up his neck and his face, raking the edges of the half-healed scars on his cheek and mandible as her fingers worked at his mouth. 

_Sidonis, at the edge of the bridge. Sidonis, laughing behind him as he sighted Garm below them. Sidonis, disappearing as Garrus realized they were decoys. Butler's body blocking the door and the teethmarks in Erash's face and they're dead, they're all dead and he'll never get the smell of their bodies out of his nose and they died because he let Sidonis fool him, they_ died _and he didn't die with them._

"Yes, yes," chanted Kovalan, working her fingers past his teeth. Her talons scraped against Garrus’ tongue and he gagged, more from the intrusion than from the slick, hot blood flooding his mouth. He tried to shove her back, but she had him pinned against the desk with his spine curved backwards, and he couldn’t find the leverage. "You know, you'll tell me why, you'll tell all of us _why_." 

“Get off him!" shouted Jack, her voice raw, and the air thundered and went electric-sour around him. Garrus fell back against the desk as Kovalan caught Jack’s blistering throw in her gut and flew into the bulkhead. 

Coughing, gagging, Garrus pushed himself to his feet and found Jack weaving next to her bed, her hand swiping at the blood under her nose. He staggered to her and threw an arm under her shoulders the second before she fell. 

"Thanks," she said weakly, and spat red on the floor. "You want to tell me what the fuck just happened?" 

"Not really," said Garrus, easing her to the bed, just in time to see Jacob trying to sit up. "But I think I'll have to." 

Someone shouted outside medbay, calling Chakwas' name, and footsteps pounded through the mess. The lights flickered on as the door opened, Garrus and Jack wincing away from the brightness in unison. 

"Dear God," said Chakwas, a hand at her throat. "What on earth —" She stopped, eyes shocked wide. 

Garrus looked across the room to where Kovalan laid in a crumpled, twitching heap, gold eyes turned toward the ceiling. His tongue burned, scraped raw, but that didn’t keep him from speaking. The thought of what Kovalan had found in the rocks, and carried with her when they brought her onto the _Normandy_ \-- that kept him silent, his gut cold and twisted. 

Disgust warred with pity in his head, and won. If any of Kovalan was still alive, there’d be time to help her. Now -- no matter how much he ached, or how badly he wanted to lie down -- he had to _think._ Whatever had ridden Kovalan back to the _Normandy_ could be haunting the corridors while he stood there, keeping Jack standing. 

And Shepard was still trapped on the Collector ship. 

_I have to think_. _No, I have to -- I have to_ lead. 

Garrus gave himself enough time to take one deep breath, and then eased Jack against her bed. His movement broke Chakwas out of her brief daze, and she crossed medbay in two quick strides, her omnitool already held out toward Kovalan. 

“Wait,” Garrus said, holding out his arm. Chakwas turned her bright glare on him, but he refused to flinch, and she went no further. Surprising, how fast the old habits came back, how he could speak and people would listen. “Don’t touch her.” 

“Garrus,” said Chakwas, horrified. “She’s in need of --” 

“Is Grunt’s stasis pod still operational?” He cut across her, not blinking until she gave him a grudging nod.

“It is, but I don’t see how that’s relevant.” 

“EDI. Power up the stasis pod.” He jerked his head toward Kovalan, who had finally gone still on the floor, thin blue blood dripping out of her mouth. “We’ve got someone who needs it.” 

Containment and control. Excellent first steps. But staring at Kovalan, knowing he should move, give orders, _lead_ , Garrus felt an old, familiar hopelessness settle over his cowl. Anything he could do wouldn’t be enough. He couldn’t keep the Collectors and their weapons out. They were already here, breathing shallow and fast at his feet. 

 


	44. Chapter 44

"You have thirty minutes of oxygen remaining," said her armor's VI. “Recommended action: evacuation.” 

Shepard groaned, muzzy and half-awake, then grimaced at the sour, stale taste coating the back of her tongue. She knew what came next: waking in a shallow bowl of ice, her helmet a few meters away, filled with dog tags. And then she'd laugh, disbelieving but somehow grateful, and then she would make her way back to the shuttle, and then —

  _Shepard. Shepard._  

“Who’s there?” Shepard asked, blinking the grit out of her eyes. No answer. 

She shifted, and her left shoulder screamed a protest as two bones dragged against one other. Hissing, she fell back limp to the ground, and blinked through a thin haze of tears. 

No broken bones on Alchera. A headache, yes, and a headful of scraps of memory, but no broken bones. Cold and wind and _remembering_ , but not this hungry pain gnawing through her. 

Not Alchera, then. 

_But I remember falling_ , Shepard thought, her mind fogged by the tangled impulses sent out by the nerves in her shoulder. She tried to sit up, and only managed to wrench her shoulder. _I fell, and I —_

_The Collector ship._ Its broken floors and walls, the ice underfoot, the circuits dangling like dead nerves from the ceiling. And it _knew_ she was there to kill it, and even in its death throes, it had tried to kill her and her squad. So the ground under her had opened, a black, jagged, mindless mouth, and swallowed her whole. 

_How far did I fall?_ She fumbled for the medigel dispenser at her thigh with a numb, shaking hand. First things first: deal with the pain, then figure out where the hell the rest of her squad was. She wouldn’t even chase Nor away; in this darkness, she’d take any familiar face, any sign that she wasn't trapped, that her squad wasn't gone. 

She shivered, more from leftover adrenaline than cold, though a chill had begun to work inexorably through her armor in spite of the life support system -- that, at least, was just like Alchera, so familiar she had to smile -- and hit the medigel trigger. It couldn’t do anything but dial down the pain; she’d be stuck with an arm like a dead vine until she hauled her ass back to the _Normandy_ , but she’d worked with worse. Important to remember that. Things could, and usually did, get worse. 

_Miranda'll be pissed_ _that I damaged the goods._ A cool, muffling sensation spread through her arm, and Shepard's eyes fluttered closed with relief. The sensation disappeared too quickly, leaving her arm full of pins and needles, but what concerned her were the numb patches in her ribcage. Broken ribs would be a much bigger problem than a broken arm. She could poke a lung, she could be bleeding internally...all sorts of injuries went along with a broken rib or two. All sorts of _invisible_ injuries.  

Still, no time to waste. 

_Shepard. Are you waking?_

"I'm awake," she said out loud. "Who's that? Garrus? Jack?" She licked dry, chapped lips.  "Nor?" 

No reply. The needle in her spine smoldered faintly — no surprise, look at where she was — but she felt no alarm, no urgency. She felt the smolder, the aches in her shoulder, the bruises along the entire left side of her body, but they hovered at a careful distance, out of reach.

_I hit my head,_ she thought _. No wonder I'm hearing things._

She gritted her teeth and sat up slowly, taking inventory as she moved. Arms, legs, head: all still attached and at various levels of functionality. Her shotgun was long gone, but her pistol purred to life when she brushed it with her right hand. At least her amp didn't seem too badly rattled; the spike came slowly, but steadied the longer she sustained it, the brief blue glow of her corona flaring silently around her before she let go. And she still had her omnitool -- but her long-range comms had been knocked out, and she'd have to be within visual distance to talk to her squad. 

_Not my worst day_. Shepard pushed to her feet, only to have a wave of dizziness swamp her as soon as she straightened her spine. She swung out her right arm for balance, waiting for her fingers to brush something solid to lean against until the wave passed through her. 

Her arm pinwheeled through the air, and she touched _nothing_. 

_Oh, Shepard, Shepard, how far did you fall, how far?_  

She fell forward, and managed to avoid landing on her left arm by rolling to the right at the last minute, to end up sucking in huge gulps on her knees.

_Breathe,_ she told herself, as the sound of her breathing turned shrill and ragged. _Don't waste oxygen, you only have —_

"You have twenty-five minutes of oxygen remaining," said her suit's VI, eternally polite, eternally uncaring. “Recommended action: evacuation.” 

"Thanks for that," Shepard said around a groan as her dizziness faded. "I'll keep it in mind."  

She'd wasted five minutes, her oxygen dwindling, and she still didn't know the two most important pieces of information: where was her squad, and had they survived the fall?  

A thin thread of optimism whispered _yes_ , they stood every chance of surviving. Hadn't she, after all? Organic lifeforms, especially humans, could sustain massive trauma, and walk away to heal and —  

Not all organic lifeforms, human or not, had her _enhancements._ Garrus didn't.  

Shepard turned her back on that line of thought, but the last image she had of Garrus shoved its way to the forefront of her mind: Garrus stumbling as the floor beneath them lurched and tore itself open. 

_He’s hard to kill_ , she told herself, and pressed her right hand against the ground. This time, she rose slowly, one leg at a time, pausing every time her head throbbed and her vision flecked over with grey. But she stayed standing, weaving a little at first, and then finally upright and steady. Progress. Too bad what she had to do next would undo all her hard work. 

_Secure that. Get it over with._ Shepard inhaled a lungful of stale, recycled air, and gripped her left wrist. She set her teeth in her lip, held her breath, and pulled her left arm level with her belly. 

The distance the medigel had put between her and the pain disappeared as her broken bones ground together and the pain came swarming back. She almost _heard_ the grinding noise they made through layers of skin and muscle; worse, she felt it, a sick, offensive shift that made her stomach clench. 

"I will not puke in my suit," Shepard hissed through her teeth, squeezing her eyes closed, and held her left arm steady as she flicked her omnitool display to life. "I will _not._ " 

Willpower or disgust at the prospect of walking around in her own vomit — a sure way to make sure this day went from "shit" to "Sovereign and the geth are attacking the Citadel" — kept her last meal where it belonged. After a few moments, the pain faded into a sullen, threatening glow. As long as she didn't move her arm, the pain would be content to wait. 

Shepard willed that thought away — pain would come, no matter what she did, and she had bigger things to worry about than a broken arm. 

_You know your sense of priorities is pretty fucked up when a broken arm doesn't even make it into the top ten_ , she thought, and barked a laugh that jarred her arm. The pain sent up a warning flare — _don't forget me, I'm here, I'm not leaving_ — then subsided again. Shepard breathed in slowly, and called up the squad beacons on her display.  

Nothing. The orange glow showed a perfect blank.

_Are you awake, Shepard?_

A jolt of panic knocked the wind out of her: _not again, I didn't lose my squad again, they're fine, they're fine, they're not gone I didn't lose them oh god the wasps are in me again they're —_

Shepard clenched her left hand into a fist, and the burst of pain in her shoulder knocked the panic loose, away and into the dark. _They might be out of range,_ she thought, her heart slowing to a normal beat again. _Their omnitools might be damaged. Whatever's happened, losing your shit will_ not _help them. So keep it locked down, and find your squad._ She unclenched her fist, her shoulder muttering darkly, and unholstered her pistol. A thin smile touched her mouth as she flicked on the flashlight — she almost hadn't brought the damn thing, and only a last-minute decision along the lines of _the more guns, the better_ had changed her mind.   

Letting her left arm fall carefully back to her side, with the omnitool display still glowing, she aimed her pistol at her feet and followed the cold arrow of light with her gaze. 

The light gleamed briefly on blackened tiles, then faded away as she moved the flashlight upward in a slow curve, until her arm stretched straight out in front of her. The light reflected off dirty, scratched resin and crumbled, ancient pods, with dark water trickling thinly through any open space. 

"Guess I found where the Collectors dump all their trash." Shepard regretted saying anything a few seconds later, when the light fell on a grey, tattered pile of fabric. Yes, the Collectors dumped their trash here — and that included the castoffs from their experiments: all the colonists Shepard hadn't been fast enough to save.  

The fact that she hadn't been alive when most of those people had died didn't matter. She had been _present_ , in some form, and what had she done? 

_You kept Garrus alive,_ said the plaintive voice at the very back of her head. _And do you really need another graveyard to haul around with you?_

She shook her head. Guilt, self-pity — whatever she was feeling, she didn't have time for it. She needed to find her squad, she needed to find a way out _._

No, not a way out. A way _up._

She raised her flashlight's beam, and tilted her head back gingerly to follow the light, holding her breath as her shoulder creaked. At first, she saw nothing but more filthy tiles, and more trickles of water, stretching high over her head, and then — 

_Shepard, Shepard, why do you taste so?_

The ground under her shook as a distant roar sounded to her right. Shepard stumbled as the slight tremor turned into a seizure, the roar growing deeper, broader, _closer_ , a sound with teeth and claws, a sound rolling out of a bloody mouth, an empty gullet opening behind it, and Shepard shuddered, because she was so _small_ compared to that sound, so small, so meaningless, and if the roar wanted her to, she would lie down and die, here and now.

_Just lie down and die._  

Her left hand clenched on its own this time, a spasm that left Shepard groaning, and pathetically relieved. "Oh, not a chance." She groaned, finding her footing again as the seizure rolled past her, even as the seductive, heavy urge to do just that — lie down and close her eyes — swamped her. "I know your fucking game." 

The Reapers were never very subtle. 

In answer, the ground under her lurched again, and her right arm swung out for balance. Her flashlight beam swept wide, and the space around her took shape under the thin spread of light. 

The roar kept going, the urge to give up pressed down on her, but Shepard barely noticed. What she did notice, as she focused the beam, was the size of the room. 

_No_. Her breath hitched, her throat squeezed tight. _Not a room. My god, I’m in a cave._

A cave big enough to hold a dozen _Normandy_ s, not carved so much as gouged out of the ancient, crumbling rock, sheeted with black ice. A lost, dead place, cold and filled with centuries of debris, with nothing but a dark lake at its center, rippling around a familiar, rough shape rising from the water. 

"Great," Shepard murmured without hearing herself as the roar faded away and the ground fell still. "Just where I wanted to be." 

_Just think lovely thoughts again. It worked the last time._

Somehow, Shepard mused, aiming her flashlight back toward the Sarcophagus — and how far away was it, that it looked so damn _small_ to her? — lovely thoughts weren't going to help her much, no matter how many of them she thought. 

But at least she knew to head _away_ from the Sarcophagus, and whatever it held inside — and wasn't that a great thought, that something might be _inside_ the thing? 

Or someone? 

_You are not listening, Shepard,_ came the whispers, feather-light voices sliding over her armor. _Lie down. You will not be cold for long._

_So much for lovely thoughts._ Shepard turned around, her back to the lake and to the Sarcophagus, and aimed her flashlight at the ground. She'd walk for twenty meters, then scan for the squad's beacons. Then a ninety-degree turn, then another twenty meters, and another scan. It struck her as painfully inefficient, but grid searches had been one of the many skills she'd let herself forget — and besides, who was going to check her work? As long as she kept inching toward her squad and _away_ from the Sarcophagus, she'd count it as a success.   

No doubt Miranda would have had a better plan, but Miranda wasn't there. 

"You have twenty minutes of oxygen remaining," noted the VI, a stark, unhappy reminder of how badly she'd lost track of time. Grinding her teeth into the inside of her cheek, Shepard tested her comms: static, weak and watery, and nothing else. 

"If anyone friendly's out there," she said, before closing the channel, "I'd appreciate a heads-up. Even you, Nor, if you’re feeling helpful, for once. Would've been nice to get a warning _before_ I got that express ride into this shithole, though." 

She was being ridiculous, talking to herself just so something filled her ears, but once she'd started, she couldn't shut off the flow of words tumbling out of her mouth. _Blame it on shock,_ she told herself, grinning too loose and too wide. _Shock's good, perfect excuse for talking to yourself. Keep it up, maybe you can fool yourself that you're not alone down here. Well,_ alone _except for whatever the Collectors threw down here._  

Another twenty meters, another query, another blank screen. The pain in her shoulder crested, then slid away, a tide peeling back from wet, cold sand. Not a good sign, even with the medigel. Her headache hadn't improved either, the ache in her forehead matched by the fierce, familiar scrape at her temples. And her stomach had decided to get in on the act, cramping itself into a hard knot that left her doubled over and gasping.  

Oh, this was very bad, very, very bad. 

_Shepard_ , said the voice, said many voices, crowding close like lovers, fingers plucking at her armor. _Oh, Shepard. Such a taste._  

"You have fifteen minutes of oxygen remaining. Recommended action —" 

"I would _love_ to evacuate," Shepard said, gritting her teeth as her stomach cramped again. "But I'm not going anywhere without my squad. So go fuck yours—" 

Another roar rolled above and under her, pressing in on all sides, shaking her inside her armor until her teeth rattled and snapped against her tongue. The ground spasmed, and Shepard spun, her left shoulder slamming into the wall as she fell, bright agony shutting out everything but a swell of vertigo. Oh god, her stomach, her _head_ , she gagged and the rich taste of vomit filled her mouth and the ground still kept shaking and the roar kept going, she couldn't think, she couldn't breathe. She could only stagger, and try to keep her bad shoulder from hitting anything as she went down. 

Then the roar stopped, the ground shuddered itself back into stillness and silence dropped over the cavern. Shepard blinked slowly, phantom colors dancing over her vision; she realized she'd fallen right on her ass, half-sitting, and she still had her pistol, its beam scattered over the water at her feet. 

_Well, it's not all bad._ She shoved her good shoulder against the wall and levered herself upright, keeping her back flat on the stone while she breathed through the nausea and pain. _At least you kept your gun, and you didn't break anything else. You —_

Water splashed around her knees in a slow wave. 

Shepard scrambled to her feet, the sudden animal pulse of alarm driving her through the pain in her shoulder and stomach. She brought up her pistol slowly and aimed the beam forward. The lake stretched out in front of her, a few faint ripples stirring the placid surface as she moved, and at its center rose the Sarcophagus, the black rock shot through with oil-slick colors, towering over her as far as she could see. 

"Fuck," Shepard said, beyond adrenaline or instinct. Her mouth worked, empty of even a single syllable, one thought clattering through her aching head: _how did I get here?_

A silent pulse of light flashed through the Sarcophagus. At its base, the water rippled as a dark, humped shape rose, rivulets running over its head and shoulders as it stood. 

Now she felt something: the needle in her spine sparked, its heat easing the chill that seeped through her armor, and Shepard sighted her pistol. No questions, no guesses — blow it to hell and then figure everything out later. 

The shape staggered as her shot clipped it in the shoulder, but didn't go down. It took a step instead, its massive head low and tilted to the side as it slouched toward her. She inhaled, sighted again, and fired. No reason to rush. No reason to waste her clips. Breathe, aim, fire. 

It didn't go down. It groaned as she shot it, once, twice, three times, the sound loud enough for her armor to pick up, and kept heaving itself toward her. The water behind it rippled again, another shape rising, and another, and another, pearl-bead eyes gleaming and rolling as they passed through the beam of her flashlight. 

_They won’t go down, they won’t, they won’t die._

She had ten, maybe twelve shots left, her mind noted dispassionately, still shock-dulled, and then nothing but her biotics. If these were the same _things_ she'd dealt with on Haestrom, that might hold them off for a while, but then what? 

_Don't panic. Use your brain, it's the best tool you've got. Think, dammit!_

Her comms crackled, sharp enough to make her flinch away from the static, but relief beat out the discomfort — someone was nearby. Someone was _alive_.

"Shepard," said Miranda's voice. "Do you read me? Shepard? We're approaching your position. We're —" 

_Shepard_ , said a voice, just behind her.  

The flashlight's beam disappeared as a heavy pair of hands covered her visor, and she fell again, in total darkness, her shoulder screaming as more hands clutched at her and dragged her down, down into the black water at her feet. 

*** 

Garrus swallowed, and tasted blood. Kovalan's talons had left deep scores along the narrow flat of his tongue, and now that the last of his adrenalin had faded away, the pain was impossible to ignore. Speaking hurt, even swallowing hurt, his entire mouth aching in time with his pulse. 

At least the door between him and the rest of the ship was closed, and if he let his shoulders slump and his eyes close for a moment, no one could see. And if he said Shepard's name when the image of her falling, arms pinwheeling uselessly in midair, broke through the surface of his thoughts, no one could hear, either. 

"Shepard," he said, and closed his eyes. He hadn't been able to reach her, not even after — and spirits forgive him for this, no matter what came later — letting Kovalan fall to her knees as he threw a hand out to Shepard. 

_She's alive_ , he told himself, one more time. _And if anyone can get her off that ship, it's Miranda_. Miranda, who'd rebuilt Shepard from bones and ice, and brought her back for a war barely anyone believed was coming; who'd stolen Shepard from him, and then brought her back, whole and alive. A woman of impressive skills and drive, an efficient commander. A small part of him was sorry he wasn't there to watch Miranda cut her way through whatever the Collectors threw at her. 

A larger part of him felt simple shame that he wasn't. He'd been at Shepard's six, right where she needed him, and he hadn't been able to save her. He'd tasted failure before, again and again, and it never changed: bitter ash coating his tongue.  

_Oh, yes,_ said a sly voice in his head. _You know all about failure, don't you? You even have your own name for it, it's Weaver-no-Anna-Melanis-Grundan-Erash-Mierin-Vortash-Monteague-Ripper-Sensat-Butler._

Garrus was almost ready for his grief, the light blade slipping under his ribs, and then enough pain to force the air out of his lungs. His _squad_ , gone, and he hadn't even had the grace to die avenging them. 

Sidonis' face swam into focus, his scentless, laughing betrayal fresh in Garrus' mind. _Boss, we have to hurry._

Garrus shook himself, the motion jarring plates bruised and cracked by his fall, and swallowed one more time. Still blood. He'd taste it forever, blood and ash, until Sidonis was dead and the squad was avenged and he was — not forgiven, but satisfied. 

_No,_ he thought, reaching for his spare case of armor, _never satisfied. It won't be that easy._

_Nothing's ever easy_ , _Garrus_ , said Shepard, wry and exhausted. He jolted, his hand fumbling at the catch of the case, and glanced back over his shoulder, expecting to see her standing behind him. The battery stayed silent around him, humid and watchful, and he faced the armor case again, willing his heart to settle. 

He'd _heard_ her, as clearly as if she'd been inches away, ready to curve her cool hand around his neck. Her voice low, pitched for his ears alone, whispering while he stood on watch, or listened to Weaver reporting. 

The sudden wave of longing — sick, shameful longing — for Omega left him dizzy. They'd been _happy,_ hadn't they? Shepard had been _happy_ , ghost or not. No great war to fight, no Council to argue with, no fresh horrors waiting on every planet — just the squad, and fighting mercs, and each other. It had been _pure_ , it had been _simple_ , and he hated himself every damn day for missing it. Not even his grief could be pure, when it had been tainted by this wish that he could go back to his grand plans and quiet nights. _Their_ quiet nights. 

_Is this how you plan on spending your time when I'm not around, Vakarian?_ Shepard asked. _Pouting in the main battery? I hope not. You've got work to do._

Her voice, clear and sharp as a scrim of ice; Garrus didn't turn around this time, but he felt the urge as a steady pull under his keel. Was he hearing Shepard out of habit, or had something gone wrong on the Collector ship? 

_More wrong, you mean_ , said Shepard, right against his ear. _Don't forget, Garrus, no one saw where I landed._

If it had, if Shepard was gone, would he wake up to find her watching him from the foot of his bed? _Again?_

"EDI," he said, hoping that his subvocals would be lost over the comms, knowing EDI would say nothing if they weren’t. "Anything from Operative Lawson's squad?" 

"Nothing of concern, Officer Vakarian," said EDI, as neutral as she had been the last four times he’d asked. "They safely docked and boarded the Collector ship, and are making progress toward Shepard's position. Operative Lawson has ordered radio silence." A brief pause, almost too quick to notice. "I am tracking their life signs, and will inform you if anything changes." 

"Thanks." His hands had steadied, so he turned back to the armor case and flicked open the latches. 

The smell of Omega air — cool, humid, rusted metal and trash and greasy smoke — rose from the armor inside. Of course; somehow he'd managed to put it out of his head that his spare set of armor wasn't _spare_ at all. Garrus ran a hand over the blasted, broken collar, traced the faint gold outline on the arm. _Archangel_. Where had the name come from?  

It didn't matter. Archangel was dead, a two-year hitch in Omega's plans. What mattered now was the crew waiting for his word outside the battery doors. He couldn't face them in bloody civvies, and his new armor was ruined. 

Garrus rubbed his forehead, scraping his talons along his fringe. He felt a wry disappointment — he'd only gotten to wear that new armor twice, and he could hear Miranda's exasperated sigh when he requested a new set. 

_She might give me a pass this time._ Another wave of grief brushed him as he lifted a vambrace from the case and the smell of Omega floated to him, stronger than ever.  

No one ever mentioned that part of grief: beyond the way it opened under your skin, bottomless, hungry, and patient, and beyond how it waited for you around every corner, just past your sightlines, in the end, all grief was a routine. A mindless, numb routine; you woke up, you ached for what was gone in every cell, and everything you touched echoed with loss. 

He'd tried to impose routine on Omega, and before that on Shepard and her corkscrew moods. Why was he surprised now when grief tried to do the same thing to him? Grief shaped itself around you, hugged your hide until you didn't know where it started and you ended.  

It had only been a handful of months, a fraction of the time he'd spent with his squad, but Garrus was _tired_ of grief, and the endless, stillborn inaction. And now, waiting to hear if he had to mourn Shepard again, just when he thought they might be —   

He knew better than to think he'd ever be done grieving. By now it was a part of him, as familiar as his armor, and he could live with that, just like he could live with the sticky guilt for being the one to walk away. That, at least, meant he could still get satisfaction, a measure of justice for the squad — and that he could keep fighting, at Shepard's six. More, and better, than he deserved.  

A piece of gold paint flaked off his armor and fell to the floor. So Archangel was dead; good. He belonged on Omega, with his squad — but Garrus was still alive, thanks to Shepard and yes, to Cerberus, and he hadn’t forgotten what Archangel had learned. 

Slowly, every muscle sore, Garrus set the vambrace aside and reached for his chestpiece. Enough thinking; he had work to do, while he waited for Miranda to drag Shepard back -- again. 

_Always Miranda, not you_ , whispered something sly and cold. _It’s never you_. 

Garrus shuddered, waiting for the voice to keep talking, but it faded away under the sound of his chestpiece sealing shut.  

*** 

As soon as the main battery doors closed behind him, Garrus sensed the shift in the _Normandy'_ s crew. The ship was well into the night cycle, just at the time of day when the mess would be crowded with crew members arguing good-naturedly over coffee and who got bunks as opposed to sleeping pods. Cheerful, muted noise would fill the mess and spill out into the corridors, leaving the ship's air warm and cluttered with a dozen or more voices. Garrus never took part, beside a few words to the engineers or Joker, but a few crew members would wave or nod as he passed. More than he expected from Cerberus. 

Tonight, the air hung cool and clammy in the empty mess. Even Gardner was silent as he scrubbed the counter, his mouth fixed in a dour, taut line. He didn't look up as Garrus passed, or pause in his work. The soft swirl of the cloth over the counter was the only sound other than Garrus' footsteps. 

The privacy curtains covered the medbay windows, so his tentative plan of checking on Jack and Jacob had to go on hold. He'd stretched the limits of Chakwas' trust by refusing to let her examine Kovalan before sealing the turian in the stasis pod, without any explanation and only Jack's glares to back him up, but the thought of letting anyone touch Kovalan — too great a risk.  

If he couldn't check in on Jack and Jacob, he could at least put himself between the crew and Kovalan, and wear himself out pacing in Port Cargo. 

_Best way to pass the time I can manage_ , he thought, heading toward the elevator with slow, careful steps, rolling his neck to ease the worst of the bruises, _and I won't be bothering Joker. I think humans call that a win-win. All except for the part where I'm in the same room as whatever Kovalan is now._

As soon as the thought passed through his head, the walls to either side bent inward, the sleek angles sloping in gentle curves over his head, and the lights flickered down from clean white to a sick, wavering yellow. 

_Vakarian_ , said someone nearby. Garrus turned, the movement pulling at new sore spots in his arms and carapace, but Gardner still scrubbed the counter, without any sign that he'd spoken, or even knew Garrus was there. 

The lights dimmed again. When Garrus looked up, the ceiling cracked and sank toward his head, a welter of browned-out shadows chasing over the tiles.  

_Vakarian. Tell us how. Tell us why._

He felt a faint tremor under his feet, distinct from the eternal vibration of the drive core, and nearly staggered when the tiles under his boots cracked. The lights at the far end of the corridor shivered and flared a rotten orange, then went out, the shadows crowding in to take its place. 

Not too far off, a high-pitched buzzing started, almost out of hearing. It bored steadily into Garrus' head, waking the headache that hadn't bothered him since he sealed Kovalan in the pod, and he tried to clear his ears with a shake of head, but the buzzing came closer, creeping higher and higher every second. And underneath it — the sound of voices, talking too fast, blurring together, a fierce manic swarm, over and over. 

_We will take this ship, we will take it all, we will have Shepard and then what will you do, what will any of you do, we will —_

He pressed his hands to the side of his head, his gut churning as the buzzing lodged deep in his body, and watched as another set of lights went out. And Gardner kept scrubbing, kept cleaning, as the _Normandy_ rotted around them.   

_Think,_ Garrus told himself, as the urge to vomit filled his mouth with saliva. _Don't let it get to you, this isn't real. It's not. It's_ not _._  

"Officer Vakarian?" 

Garrus turned to face the owner of the voice, a short, dark-skinned woman with cropped hair and bright eyes. She peered up at him from the elevator, and took a tentative step into the corridor. The white-lit corridor, scrubbed and shining.

"Are you all right, sir?" 

He nodded, swallowing until his mouth cleared. "Concussion," he said, by way of explanation, relieved when the woman nodded, her face softening briefly into what he guessed was sympathy. "Is there something you need?" he asked, when she kept staring at him expectantly. His subvocals thrummed quiet, fading distress, but she didn't notice.  

"Evening report, sir," she said, holding out a datapad. "I've already logged it with EDI, but it needs to be signed off before it can be formally uploaded." She shrugged, a tired half-grin tilting one side of her mouth. "With Commander Shepard and Operative Lawson…" She hesitated over the words, her eyes cutting to the right, before she drew herself up. "With Commander Shepard and Operative Lawson unavailable at the moment, and Operative Taylor in medbay…" This time, when she trailed off, silence stretched out between them. 

Garrus took the datapad, scanning it with half his attention. The rest he kept focused on the crew member, watching her pulse and breathing rate on his visor. His own, still too high, he ignored. "Is there anything in here I need to be aware of?" he asked, needlessly, favoring the sorest side of his tongue. Beyond the general ship reports and requisitions, he already knew what would make up the bulk of the report _._ "Anything that requires immediate action?" 

_Besides the fact that I'm hallucinating_. He crushed down a laugh, his hand tightening briefly on the datapad. This moment was important; some of the crew _trusted_ him, turian or not. Some of the crew would _listen_ when he spoke. 

_Everything's useful,_ he thought, and heard Shepard's voice under his own. 

"No, sir," said the crew member. "All we need is you to sign off on the report." 

Nothing paused Cerberus' implacable bureaucracy, apparently. "And you need me to sign off on this…?" Garrus asked, watching the crew member's heart rate leap slightly at the question. 

"No one else is available, sir," she said, with a light emphasis on the last word. "We — that is, Yeoman Chambers and I -- decided your sign-off was the most appropriate, under the circumstances." 

Garrus hummed, nodded, and held the datapad out to the crew member, who blinked at it, thin eyebrows drawing close together. 

"Sir?" 

"Hold off on sending it," he said calmly. "You'll have to send a second one when Shepard and Operative Lawson get back. Don't waste your time."  

The woman's face cleared, another tired grin flashing over her face, in defiance of typical Cerberus neutrality. "Yes, sir." She paused, then hurried on before Garrus could turn to the elevator. "Officer Vakarian, perhaps it's unprofessional to say so, but — I'm honored to serve on this ship. With Commander Shepard. With you. I —" 

"Thank you," he interrupted, not impatiently, but filled with the need to get down to Port Cargo, to do what he should have done instead of sitting in the battery, and get himself between the crew and Kovalan. "It's appreciated, Officer…?" 

"Fields, sir," she replied. "Thank you, sir." Without another word, she shifted out of his way, and let him step onto the elevator. 

Garrus waited until he felt the elevator move, until he was sure he had passed out of earshot.  Then he slammed his fist against the wall, sighing harsh and heavy in his throat. 

_What the hell was that_? he thought, spreading his fingers against the wall, his eyes closed. _What the hell just happened to me?_ His heart thudded against bruised ribs, and he felt his arms shaking, too hard to blame on the headache or adrenaline, or anything but bewilderment. He hit the wall again, his head thrown back. Too many mysteries. 

The engineering deck thrummed quietly around him as he stepped off the elevator. No doubt Tali was holding court near the drive core. He could step inside, check in on her, but he passed by silently, the thought fading as the door to Port Cargo opened 

The spirit turned to smile at him, the lights reflecting dully on her armor.

So she'd finally decided to make an appearance. Garrus waited for his anger, as old and familiar as his grief. It came, along with a wry thread of resignation: of course she'd show up _now_ , long after she could have helped, made any difference. 

Her face startled him every time, the stark, white eyes glowing over cracked and half-healed skin, her smile a grotesque stretch of dry white lips. "Vakarian," she said, but Garrus cut her off with a slash of his hand. 

"What are you doing here?" he hissed, glad of the closed door at his back but unable to keep down a sick chill when his eyes fell on the stasis pod. Kovalan's head lolled to one side of her cowl, her face obscured by the milky mass effect field holding her in place; she didn't move, but Garrus felt her fingers in his mouth, and heard her young, crazed voice. 

_I went into the rocks_. 

"And what — what is happening? Where is Shepard?" 

The spirit's smile dropped away. "She is…" She opened both her hands, palm-up, and gave a one-shouldered shrug. "She fell," the spirit said, eventually, just as Garrus's frustration crested and all he could smell was the hot, dry scent of his anger. "I could not reach her." 

"Did you even try?" he snapped. He could feel himself shaking, grief and anger churning in his gut. "Do you _ever_?" 

Flat white eyes met his. "I tried," said the spirit, her cracked voice barely a whisper. "I could not — she _fell_ , Vakarian, and I could not reach her." 

Training, not instinct, made Garrus bite back the mouthful of retorts. Grief could be a tool, too, a lever; how many times had he used someone's tears at C-Sec, edging them into position with a few questions? He knew how grief sounded, in his own voice or a thousand others, and he knew it now, as the spirit let her open hands fall to her sides. 

_I really am a bastard_ , he thought. Then, he asked, as gently as he could, "Where is Shepard?" 

He expected the spirit to say, _on the Collector ship_ , or even _dead_ , but the spirit flinched, her eyes focused past him, and said "Over the hills, and far away." 

_Shepard, her mouth and eyes chilled white, smiling drunkenly at him in his room while the squad slept, saying those same words._

Garrus swallowed, the echo of blood on his tongue, and tried again. "Is she —"

"She is alive," said the spirit, her eyes coming back to his face. "They have found her. They are returning. You will hear them, soon.” 

Garrus sank into his armor, relief leaving him loose and shaky, and the next question spilled out of his mouth with him even thinking it. "You mean the squad, right?" 

The spirit shrugged again, looking down at her hands. "Yes," she said. "But others found Shepard first." She nodded at Kovalan, asleep in her glass pod, and gave another shrug. "They will try to change her, make her…pliable. It will not work. She will come back. Do not worry." 

Garrus couldn't speak. The spirit smiled, her face creasing, then pointed without looking at Kovalan. 

"You should kill that one," said the spirit. "It would be kinder. Safer. She went into the rocks and they do not let anyone go." She stepped close to him, tilting up her broken face to his. "You will have to go back to where it began, to understand," she said. "Both of you, Vakarian." 

She vanished, air eddying into now-empty space, and left Garrus staring at Kovalan's pod, his mouth still aching. 

He didn't stare any longer than ten seconds, the dregs of anger and horror swirling in him, before EDI's voice intruded. 

"Officer Vakarian, Operative Lawson's squad has docked in the shuttle bay. Commander Shepard is with them." Another of EDI's barely-detectable pauses. "She is alive, and headed to medbay." 

*** 

Garrus nearly ran over Zaeed as he left the elevator; only the human's quick reaction saved them from a collision. 

"Bloody hell," snapped Zaeed, scrubbing his face with a gloved hand. "Watch your ass, Vakarian." 

Garrus ignored him and wheeled past, aimed toward medbay, then stopped short when he saw a long trail of thick, black water, leading from the elevator to medbay. "Shepard?" he asked, past caring, for one brief moment, of protocol and professionalism, trapped by the need to _know_. 

"She lives," said Thane, sitting at a table in the mess, his breather helmet on the chair beside him. Grunt and Samara sat across from him, with Kasumi at the head of the table. They all looked weary beyond words, their armor still on, and pitted with stains and burn marks. "She —" 

"If you call _that_ living," Zaeed rumbled, gesturing at the water droplets on the floor. "Bloody hell," he said again, to no one in particular. "What a fuckin' mess."   

After that, no one spoke. Garrus waited, listening for Shepard's voice, and heard nothing. Whether that was a good or bad sign, he didn't have the energy to ask. Not yet.  


	45. Chapter 45

Long after the rest of the squad melted away to the showers and their bunks, after even Gardner gave up polishing the counter and sealed himself inside a sleep pod, Garrus waited, listening to the echoes and resisting the urge to pace the mess. He knew pacing wouldn’t help. He couldn't outrun what he'd heard, or ignore the black water drying to a crust on the floor. 

All he could do was wait, and hope the _Normandy_ didn’t go through any more changes around him. 

He could head back to the main battery, and try to put this empty time to good use: lose himself in calculations until Miranda or Chakwas came to bring him whatever news they had, but when he tried to climb the steps, Zaeed’s words rattled louder in his head, driving the headache to the very front of his skull. 

_If you call that living_. 

Right. Like he would go anywhere, after hearing that. 

_She's alive_ , he thought. _Take what you can get, and don't forget you can't even count Shepard out when she's dead. You know that better than anyone._

He certainly did. 

_If you call that living_. 

Enough -- he could stand here, and let five thoughtless words drive him crazy, or he could figure out a way to help. To work. To -- spirits damn it all -- to _lead_. But for that, he’d need armor -- inner armor, what he’d worn as a cop and again on Omega, the armor that kept him pure, kept him focused. No sentiment, no fear. He had to reason, to think. 

He didn't hear Miranda calling his name until she raised her voice, clear and sharp as a rifle shot, and he looked up to see her standing just outside the medbay doors, her arms folded over her battered armor. 

Garrus straightened and clasped his hands behind his back. "Miranda --" he said, too many questions crowding his head for any of them to make it out of his mouth. 

"She's alive," Miranda said. 

"What happened?" he asked, collected and neutral, no subvocals and no salt-water smell of anxiety to give away how his heart skidded. “The rest of the squad —" 

"There's a great deal to explain, Officer Vakarian," Miranda nodded back toward medbay. "Much of it alarming," she added, tucking the same piece of hair behind her ear as it slipped free. "And we need to determine the appropriate next steps. I'd like your help with that. In any case…" She moved to the side, leaving room for him to enter medbay. "Please." 

After the absolute hush in the mess, medbay swarmed with small sounds: the beeps of monitors, the rustle of fabric as someone shifted, Mordin clearing his throat, and the grit of Chakwas' boots in the dried, silty water. Jack and Jacob had been moved, presumably during the time Garrus had spent in Port Cargo, and now only one patient remained in medbay. 

Now, Garrus understood Zaeed. He understood every damn word, and he understood why Miranda looked ready to collapse. He clenched his fists as the door closed behind him, and took the few steps between him and Shepard's bed. 

He didn't reach out to touch her. All he wanted to do was feel the rise and fall of her chest, or the pulse in her neck, unfamiliar, stolen things, but there were too many eyes, too many bright lights. And Shepard — Shepard wouldn't feel it even if he did touch her. So he kept his hands at his sides, and looked. _Observed_ , like any good cop would. Like he had, once, a lifetime ago. 

Funny, how anything could be armor if you used it the right way. 

_It’s anything is a_ tool _, Garrus. At least get my platitudes right._

A drop of black water dripped from a tear in Shepard's armor and fell to the floor. Garrus heard the tiny _plink_ as it landed. Off in the corner, Miranda opened her omnitool display and pretended to look busy, but Mordin watched him with frank appraisal, one hand under his chin. Waiting for his reaction. Waiting to see how _sentimental_ he could be. 

No sentiment here. None. A dull black suit of armor lay on the table in front of him, slowly leaking black water from deep tears in its legs and sides. A thin sheet of ice covered every inch of Shepard that Garrus could see, but that steady, just-audible drip of water had to come from somewhere, and the only possible place was inside Shepard's armor. 

No wonder Zaeed had said what he said; the body in front of Garrus was a blank canvas, a suggestion of humanity, nothing more. Ripped open, drowned, _frozen_. 

He rested one hand on the bed and tried not to think about how yet _again_ she'd fallen, frozen, and been left for Cerberus to retrieve. 

Garrus inhaled, and smelled Omega. 

_You will have to go back to where it began, to understand. Both of you, Vakarian._

_Shepard's not going anywhere_. Garrus swallowed as thick, bitter frustration crawled up his throat. He couldn't see Shepard's face. He couldn't _see_ her. It took too long, with Miranda and the doctors pretending not to pay attention, before he trusted himself, and his armor, to speak. 

"Walk me through it," Garrus said to Miranda, not looking away from Shepard. He felt, not saw, Chakwas shift in surprise, and realized too late he should have tempered what he said, not made it so much of a demand. 

_The hell with that_ , he thought, and gave Miranda two seconds before he did look up. "Miranda?" 

She raised one weary eyebrow, then shut down her omnitool. "Docking with the Collector ship was uneventful, as was our descent to Shepard's position." 

"No Collectors?" he asked. Cold radiated from Shepard's body — from _Shepard_ , he corrected himself, and kept his eyes focused on Miranda's. 

"Nothing but bodies," she said. "As our path intersected the previous squad's on several occasions, we can attribute some of those casualties to you. Others appeared to have been dead for some time. Whether they died from natural causes, or through accidents, we were unable to determine. It wasn't our priority." 

Garrus nodded, shoving down his frustration as Miranda hesitated over her next words. 

"Owing to the general disrepair of the ship, it took us over an hour to reach the level where we detected Shepard's beacon. No engagement with the Collectors occurred — but we did encounter anomalies, at one and a half kilometers from Shepard's beacon." 

"Anomalies," Garrus said, flatly. Miranda nodded, her own gaze flicking to Shepard's still form before lifting to meet his again. "I'm not going to like this, am I?" he added. Weariness wove its way through his voice, settled around his cowl. They'd never get a break. _Never_. 

"It's fascinating, really," said Miranda. Behind her, Chakwas looked up from her omnitool, her eyes too bright in a neutral face, then turned her attention back to her display. Miranda gave Garrus a hard sliver of a smile, a steely glint of humor flashing in her eyes. "As are most of the horrors Shepard brings to my attention." 

Garrus laughed, startling himself, along with Mordin and Chakwas. "Right. So, these _anomalies_?" 

It felt good, asking questions, _investigating_ , building the chain of evidence to follow to a solution. The _best_ solution. It felt familiar, too, just like his old armor, and that made him wary. Nostalgia came hand-in-hand with grief, and could be even more of a paralytic, if you let it. 

Garrus wouldn't. A taste was too much; he scraped his teeth against the sorest part of his tongue and let the pain drive his focus back to where it belonged: Miranda's briefing and the cold body in front of him. 

"At one and a half kilometers from her location, our omnitools detected seismic shifts. None of them strong enough to threaten the integrity of the ship, even in its damaged state, but disruptive. When we reached the one kilometer mark, we started to pick up traces of element zero, as well as radiation signals almost identical to those given off by active relays." 

Miranda rubbed one temple. "On a smaller scale, of course, but unmistakable. The interior of the Collector ship was — the best term I have is _re-ordering_ itself. The seismic shifts we detected were entire sections of the ship moving, instantly, from one area to another." 

"They were what?” 

_Go back to where it began._

"I think," said Miranda, her eyes thoughtful, hard lines showing on either side of her mouth, "the ship was moving Shepard during those shifts." 

"Oh, this is preposterous —" said Chakwas, but Miranda ignored her, and so did Garrus. As far as Garrus was concerned, they were the only people in the room. He nodded at Miranda to go on, his gut knotting. 

 "We detected two major shifts, with approximately a five-minute pause between them, and they ended when Shepard's beacon reached a central location." 

"Damn. Let me guess," Garrus said, watching Miranda rub her temple again, a rueful smile cutting across her face. "Haestrom?" 

No reason to say anything else. _Haestrom_ was a new shorthand, even for Miranda, who only got to use it second-hand. 

_Lucky her_ , Garrus thought, as a memory sharp enough to cut leapt out to push at his armor, searching for fractures: Tali slumped and unmoving, Shepard with blood on her chin, and eyes flashing in the dark. 

"Haestrom," Miranda agreed, and sighed. She leaned back against an empty bed, unaware or ignoring the loose strand of hair hanging at her cheek. "I had a…hunch, you could say, and ran a quick scan. It matched the energy signatures from the so-called Sarcophagus encountered on Haestrom." She gave him a strange look, too soft for her features, and Garrus realized belatedly that she looked _sorry_ for him. 

Before he could bristle, or change the subject, Miranda kept going, the awful sympathy in her gaze not fading. 

"Nine minutes passed before we reached her last known position." Miranda gripped her arms tighter, but her voice revealed nothing. "It appeared she had been attacked by Collectors."

Garrus nearly commented on the conditional statement — was this what sympathy did, softened facts, added imprecision? — but his need to hear what came next kept his mouth closed. 

"Her armor had been ruptured. When we recovered her, she was frozen inside her suit, all life signs suspended."  Miranda's eyes closed, her mouth curling down. Small tells, yes, but on Miranda, they _shouted_. Garrus felt a wave of pity for Miranda, almost as surprising as hers for him, and tried to keep his subvocals low, out of her hearing range. 

"So this is your idea of alive?" he asked, trying for a joke and failing miserably.

Miranda opened her eyes and gave him an unimpressed look.. "It's my idea of something I can work with," she said. "Our mission was a success; Shepard has been recovered." 

_Again_ hung in the air over Shepard's body, and the only sound in medbay was the steady drip of the black water slowly leaking from her armor. 

*** 

Holding a mug of tea he wouldn't drink, Garrus stared out the viewport in Miranda's office. 

"It isn't visible from this angle," Miranda said. Garrus heard her set her datapad aside, and pick up her mug of coffee. "The Collector ship." 

"I know." He turned the mug in his hands, grateful for the small warmth that made it through his gloves. What he could see, what Miranda could see if she walked away from her desk and joined him at the viewport, was the faint glitter of the wreckage of the _Kraliken_ , a few hundred thousand kilometers away.

The rational part of his personality told him to look away, and to look at its destruction as a job well done. The _Kraliken_ had been a corpse, but without the simple courtesies most dead bodies got. Better that it got blown to hell than get turned into a vehicle for whatever passengers the Collectors had poured into it. 

_Better that then ending up like Kovalan._ He set the mug down. His hands wanted, _needed_ , to clench, and if the mug stayed in his hands any longer, he'd shatter it. _Control. You’re a cop. You're a soldier. Act like it._

"We stopped the _Kraliken_ from leaving the system." Miranda came up behind him, booted feet nearly silent on the tiled floor. She'd showered while the tea and coffee were brewing, and no sign remained of the exhausted woman Garrus had seen in medbay. Miranda Lawson, Cerberus operative, shared oxygen with him now. "I call that a win. I think Shepard would, too." 

No doubt Miranda meant to be comforting, or else she wanted to create some kind of fellow feeling between them, but Garrus only felt a surge of distaste so strong it was almost contempt. "You rebuilt her," he said, not looking away from the viewport. "You can't read her mind." _You don’t know her, either_ , he thought, shame wrapping itself around his ribs as the words passed through his head. 

"She gave the order —" Miranda retorted hotly, but Garrus shook his head, almost laughing. How could she not _understand_ this, after everything else that had happened? 

"You think she'd have ordered its destruction if she had any choice?" 

In his memory, Shepard leaned against the Mako, one corner of her mouth, still so unfamiliar, quirking upwards. _Words mean nothing till you put them into action, Garrus_. 

 "It was the only option, Miranda. Not the best one. Big difference." 

"Semantics," said Miranda, after a brief pause. "It had to be done. She did it. It's what we —" 

"— brought her back for, I know." Garrus turned away from the viewport, sick of the far-off shimmer and sick of waiting for the next disaster to hit. No relief, no rest — how long till there wasn't any hope? 

_Not the martyr act_ , said Shepard's voice, close enough to his ear to send heat over his hide. _It didn't work for you on Omega, and it won't work for you here. Think, Vakarian._

"I understand there might be complications later, with the turian government and the Council." Miranda watched him steadily, all unruffled, superior calm. "Surely the Collector ship will be proof enough that we had no other options, as you said." 

For a heartbeat, Garrus was too preoccupied by an awkward burst of gratitude that Miranda hadn't suggested Kovalan as evidence in their defense that he didn't catch the drift of her statement at first. And then --

"You’re _kidding_ me.” His anger flared, dangerously close to his limit, and he didn’t go on until he was sure of his control."You're not going to _save_ it, are you? You saw that thing, you saw what it did to Kovalan — hell, you've seen what it did to Shepard, and you want to keep it around?" 

Miranda would never shrug, but she did look away, smoothing her uniform over her hips. “The decision’s out of my hands,” she said. “The Illusive Man has ordered its destruction. Three heavy cruisers are en route. It’ll be dust within twenty-four hours.” 

_Three heavy cruisers_. Garrus’ anger sank, faded to dull embers. Just how much money did the Illusive Man have to throw around? He filed the thought away, for later consideration -- and he _would_ consider it, because if Cerberus had three heavy cruisers, he was damn sure they had more -- and focused himself back on Miranda. “And your opinion on that?”

"I found compelling arguments for both sides of the issue." Miranda looked up, dark hair framing smooth features. "It's not as simple as you'd like it to be, Officer Vakarian. There are many considerations —" 

"No, there aren't." Garrus bit off each word, his voice as expressionless as he could make it. No emphasis, just simple facts. He took a step closer, not quite into Miranda’s personal space, but enough to make her eyes narrow. "It tried to kill us." 

"So, what, we kill it back? An eye for an eye?" Miranda scoffed. "A little reductive, don’t you think?" 

"In case you missed it," Garrus said, icy calm, "that ship kidnapped and murdered _thousands_ of human colonists. Our mission is to stop them." 

"And for that, we need _information_." Miranda rubbed her temple, dropping her hand when she saw Garrus watching her. "It's not as cut and dry as you like to think it is," she said, calmly. "Like I said, I see both sides of this issue. That ship is an incredible resource, not just for our mission." 

Garrus scoffed, his harsh, scornful subvocals clear enough for even Miranda to understand. "For Cerberus too, right?" 

"For humanity," Miranda said, unmoved, unashamed, "and by extension, the rest of the galaxy." 

He dug his teeth into his tongue to keep from laughing.

"And what we need to revive Shepard could be on that ship, or in the files EDI hasn't decrypted yet," Miranda added. Her voice barely changed, but when Garrus focused on her through his visor, her pulse had sped up slightly, along with her breathing rate, and her pupils had dilated, just enough for his scans to pick up. Miranda arched one eyebrow, no doubt aware of what he was doing. "So," she said. "One side. The other —" 

Garrus waited. 

"You're right," said Miranda. "It tried to kill us. It killed the _Kraliken'_ s crew. And I think we can both agree that Shepard would happily order us to destroy it." She almost smiled. "There's just one problem with that." 

"Let me guess," said Garrus, sighing, as Miranda nodded. 

"We don't have the weaponry to do so, hence the heavy cruisers." She rubbed her temple again, giving him a look that might have been sheepish, on another face, on another ship. "I've looked over your schematics for integrating a Thanix cannon into the _Normandy'_ s weapon systems. I planned to approve it — unfortunately, I seem to have gotten a little sidetracked." 

Garrus huffed a faint laugh. It felt good, a little of the weight around his cowl lifting, but from the corner of his eye, the last of the _Kraliken_ gleamed, and within seconds reality crashed down on him again, a choking, bitter fog of ash. 

How could he laugh, anyways, with Shepard frozen inside her armor, fifteen meters away? 

_That's sweet of you, Garrus, but you're allowed to have a life even after I run head-first into another disaster. I won't be mad. Promise_. 

_If you're handing out promises_ , he thought at her voice, _how about one where you promise to wake up and tell me how bad an idea it was for me to follow you on this mission to hell?_

Shepard didn’t answer. No surprise there. 

“In any case,” said Miranda. 

"Of course there is," drawled Garrus, folding his arms across his armor. As long as he focused on Miranda, on all the little details of leadership, he couldn’t feel the cold radiating out of Shepard, or smell Omega. "Let's hear it." 

"Our dextro supplies — rations, medications, suit filters — are critically low." Miranda flashed him a brief, cool look, vaguely apologetic — _we never thought we'd have dextro races on board at all; it wasn't confirmed that Archangel was turian until we arrived on Omega; we thought the bare minimum would suffice —_ then nodded again toward her datapads. "We have enough rations to reach the nearest outpost for restocking, but our quarian guests require more specialized care than we can provide. And Shepard —" She shook her head. "I have to admit, I don't like the thought of docking at the Citadel or Ilium. Shepard's conspicuous enough on her own — her absence would cause too many ripples. Not to mention we couldn't get her the care she needs, nor the privacy the doctors and I need to —" 

"Get to the point, Miranda," Garrus interrupted. "You've said everywhere but where we're going." He swallowed, his throat clicking, and realized his subvocals had vanished from his voice. "Only one place we can go," he added, the bones in his hands and wrists creaking. Clammy, dirty air, gunshots in the distance, the sisters laughing in the practice range. 

_Omega._  

*** 

"Officer Vakarian," said EDI — through his private comms, nothing anyone else could hear — "Aria T'Loak is attempting to establish communications."

Garrus didn't respond. He didn't let himself move, either, but kept standing, straight as he could, facing the door Miranda and Mordin had dragged Shepard through over an hour ago. He'd tried to hide his frustration at not being allowed inside with a joke about only being good for lifting things, but Miranda had given him such a flatly unimpressed look that he'd taken his place outside without any other comment. And so here he stood, and had stood for the past hour, and would be standing, for as many hours as it took. 

_For what? For Shepard to wake up and say_ That was horrible, let's never do that again _? For her to wake up and be fine? Just what the hell was the point of coming along?_

At least he had an answer for that: he couldn't be anywhere else. Pure sentiment -- but without anyone here to watch him, he could indulge, for a moment, before the inner armor went up again. 

"Officer Vakarian," EDI repeated. "Aria —" 

"Heard you the first time." Garrus rolled his shoulder, listening for the faint scrape of ceramics as he moved. Except for his voice, and the faint sounds his armor made as he shifted position, the clinic was silent. No patients, no staff — even the security mechs had been deactivated. The watch was his, and his alone. "Let me guess — Aria's the reason why we docked without an audience?" 

"Operative Lawson negotiated the private dock, Officer Vakarian," EDI replied. "A favor for a favor." 

"Right." Shoulder rolled, Garrus moved on to his neck, wincing at the new bruises that appeared with every movement. His tongue burned, but that was easy to ignore, as long as he didn't talk too much. "There's no such thing as _a favor for a favor_ with Aria. No matter how it all falls out, you end up owing her." 

"A rational assumption, based on your dealings with her," said EDI. "However, she has deactivated all security feeds from this sector, and has concealed the _Normandy_ 's presence." 

Heavy, cold dread settled into Garrus' gut. "Then we definitely owe her, EDI. The question is, how big is the favor she'll ask for?" 

"I lack the —" 

"Rhetorical question, EDI,” Garrus said, staring at the door. Sound-proofed walls and doors made sense in a medical clinic, where the screams of one patient might have a bad effect on all the others, but damn, he wanted _some_ idea of what was going on behind that door. "Tell her I'm not interested."  

"She anticipated that response." One of EDI's brief pauses. "So she authorized me to give you a message. She knows where you can find Lantar Sidonis." 

Forget cold dread; forget the headache and the sore tongue, forget everything but the way the world narrowed to a fine thread of fire, setting every nerve ablaze and how his mouth filled with the savage, bitter-salt taste of _vengeance_. 

Garrus swallowed, over and over, his pulse pounding hard in his neck. 

"Does she?" he managed, his voice flat in the stale, cool air. Sidonis. _Sidonis._ He'd shoot the bastard dead — no, he'd shoot the bastard, and leave him to bleed out, alone, somewhere far away from anyone alive, in the trash, in the _dirt_. 

"Put her on, EDI," Garrus said. 

"Garrus Vakarian," said Aria. Garrus' stomach turned; how much had she known of the hit against the squad? How much —

"Aria," he said, remembering a toast in Afterlife, Aria watching the squad, old, old eyes glittering. _Sidonis_. He breathed deep, and kept his eyes ahead, on the door between him and Shepard. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" 

"You're more civil than I expected." Afterlife's faint, animal roar filled the comm space around Aria's voice. "Your Cerberus friend didn't have time for pleasantries. All business, that one." 

"Operative Lawson's got a lot on her mind," said Garrus, surprised by the knee-jerk reaction to defend Miranda. _Well,_ he thought. _Shepard and her suicide missions do bring people together._ Unaccountably, he thought of Ash, grinning at him in the mess, and shook his head. Aria was old enough, smart enough, to read anything she needed to know in just his pauses. Careful steps. 

"Oh, I'm sure she does." He felt Aria savoring the silence, no doubt waiting for him to ask her to get to the point, to demand what she knew about Sidonis, and clenched his fists until the now-familiar ache echoed in the bones. He had to know. He could end it, scrub out the stain Sidonis had left on the galaxy, make things a little brighter.

It was what he'd come to Omega to do, after all. The irony didn't escape him. 

The door hissed open. Garrus looked up, focusing his visor within a half-second, and craned his neck to see past Miranda as she stepped through. He didn't see anything except Mordin, and the orange glow of his omnitool, before the door closed behind Miranda. She raised an eyebrow at him, but waited, watching, no doubt making her own guesses as to who was on the other end of the line. 

"How is the commander, by the way?" Aria sounded like she was settling in to stretch this out as long as possible, maximum entertainment value. It didn't surprise Garrus, but it did disgust him. The squad had meant something. They had changed things, or tried to, and for a while it had worked — and now Aria dangled their killer over his head like a toy. "I hear she was in rough shape when she arrived. It's good you've brought Mordin in." 

"You know Shepard," Garrus said. Miranda's chin lifted. _Ah,_ she mouthed. _Problem?_

Garrus gave her one short shake of his head. Better to play Aria's game, let it spool out until she got tired. Of course, then she'd be bored, and that’d be a whole new kind of trouble. 

But he wouldn't owe her anything. Garrus could live with that. 

"Not as well as some, I think," Aria purred. Garrus' heart clenched. "Strange, what I heard about your little squad. They always seemed to know just when to pull out — oh, except for that first fight with Eclipse. You got yourself injured, didn't you? A little careless. Maybe you didn't listen quite as well as you should have?" 

"It was a long time ago," Garrus said, the almost-lie rolling out of his mouth smooth and sure, even as he wondered. _How much did you see? Shepard? The spirit? What’s your game this time, Aria?_ "Lots of new scars since then." 

Miranda's mouth twitched. 

"So I've heard. Something about a gunship, and a certain commander not moving fast enough?" 

He'd expected a cheap shot at Shepard sooner or later, but he felt his anger spike anyways; he had to remind himself to breathe normally, to keep his voice steady, anything to keep control until he had a _location_ , somewhere to hide and line up his shot. He'd only need one. Just one, and the galaxy would be so much cleaner. Amazing what blood could wash away. 

"My fault for thinking I could take it down myself," he said. "Shepard was —" 

"Oh, whatever," snapped Aria. "Dance around it all you want, Vakarian, but there are a lot of eyes on this station." 

"And they're all yours, aren't they?" Garrus said, too loudly. His voice echoed through the clinic, rattled against the sleeping mechs. Aria hadn’t called him _Archangel_ once, he realized -- had she held that back, a chip to cash in later? Or did she really not care? Had the squad been that small to her? 

_Don’t go down that road._ _Keep it together. You’ve almost got what you want. And they weren’t -- they weren’t small to you._ He closed his eyes for half a second, a tell that Miranda wouldn’t miss, but he didn’t care. His inner armor, cracked once, kept cracking, a web of fine lines spreading across its surface. But it didn’t matter. It was almost over. Almost clean again. 

"Enough to matter," said Aria, her smile audible. "Ask Shepard what she remembers once they get her out of that armor. I'm _dying_ to know." 

"It'll go on the to-do list," Garrus said. 

"My, my. Not so polite now, hm?" A sigh. "You remember the way to the old base, don't you?" 

Garrus didn't reply. All he saw was the view from the balcony, the wide clear sweep of the bridge below him, and all he heard was Shepard's voice: _I spent most of the night on the balcony. It’s an excellent sniper position._

It was. He'd learned that the hard way, hadn't he? Four months ago, watching mercs climb the barricade while the squad's lives spilled around him, lockers broken open and ransacked, the smell of blood everywhere. 

_Who needs what the Collectors can do_ , Garrus thought to himself, while Aria breathed quietly on the other end of the comms, _when it's so easy to do this to ourselves?_

"I remember," he said. 

Aria laughed, slow and rich, and closed the channel.

"Heading out?" said Miranda, a beat later. 

*** 

No matter how easy Miranda tried to make it for him to leave -- _we’ve barely started the first scans, it’ll be hours before we have anything, Zaeed and Thane will be here_ \-- Garrus needed to find a justification for leaving Shepard. She'd understand his need to hunt Sidonis down and erase him as completely as possible, a few stains and a body and nothing else — but he needed it for himself. Was vengeance worth it? 

_Hey, boss!_  

Yes, it was. 

No one questioned him walking fully-armed through Omega either, a turian in blasted armor, murder in every step. A few batarians postured, but they disappeared back into the smudged shadows and filth after one look at his face. 

He took his time; not because he wanted to savor this walk, but because there was no reason to hurry. No one needed him to hurry this time. Anyone who might have was dead, just bodies in two ragged lines. 

_Be sure you want this, Garrus_ , said Shepard. 

_You're not talking me out of this,_ he told her. 

_Oh, no point in that. But once you pull that trigger, you've got to live with yourself. There needs to be justice, but are you the best person to give it?_

_Just the only one_ , Garrus thought.

At the foot of the bridge, he paused, old habit freezing him midstep. The fans at the end of the block blew a cloud of cold, rancid air past him, but he barely noticed the smell. He scanned the balcony, the still-open windows, waiting for someone to notice his approach, and to welcome him back. 

The base stayed silent. No one noticed him, no one cared that he'd finally come home. 

The door hung open, half-torn from its recesses, the walls beyond it covered in scorch marks and burn holes. If he focused, Garrus could see one of the old couches, turned on its side, its cushions ripped open and spilling their contents across the floor. Every table, every piece of furniture, every broken piece of glass, lay silent under a grey fur of dust. 

"Welcome home," he said, the only sound other than the low, ponderous whirr of the fans, and passed through the open door. 

The bloodstains had dried and faded to faint brown marks on the floor and walls, and nothing more than a hint of spent thermal clips hung in the air. As far as Garrus could see, no one had tried to lay claim to the base after the squad died. It had been left to stand empty, a monument for what happened to the defiant, and to the ones who challenged the way things worked on Omega. 

But the bodies -- the bodies were gone, without anything to mark where he had lain them, one by one, in two rows. Weaver’s stool still lay on its side, and one of Vortash’s datapads still glowed, the last of its power lighting up the display, but they were gone. He hadn’t gotten there in time. 

“I’m here,” he called, his voice vibrating with a fresh mix of grief and well-worn anger. He’d had months to hone both to a killing edge, and they shimmered in the stale air. “I’m back.” 

Something moved, a shadow breaking off from the rest almost soundlessly, and for an instant Garrus thought the spirit had followed him from the _Normandy_ , to offer more useless advice. He turned to face the movement, grief and anger falling away, tumbling down and down, until all he felt was a numb, cool _peace_. It could end. He would end it. 

Sidonis stared at him from the base of the stairs, arms limp at his side, hollow-eyed and keening, almost too quietly to hear. "Garrus," he said, his subvocals not breaking, just a low, agonized hum under his words. "You came. I knew — I waited for you, I wanted to —" 

Garrus lifted his gun, almost dreaming. Almost over. So easy, in the end, after all the miserable nights in the main battery as his face healed and his dreams rang full of dead voices; he just had to pull the trigger, and the scales would start to balance. But first —

"You bastard," he said, rage slowly blossoming through him, wiping out the brief peace. He had to cut this out of himself, clear out the rest of Omega before he went back to Shepard. Wipe the slate clean, bring justice to Omega this last time. All he had to was pull the trigger. Just one shot. He couldn't miss. 

"Garrus," said Sidonis, almost pleading. 

"You deserve this," Garrus ground out. The litany pounded through him, _Weaver-no-Anna-Melanis-Grundan-Erash-Mierin-Vortash-Monteague-Ripper-Sensat-Butler._ One shot, and they could rest. His finger tightened on the trigger, the shot lined up, and Sidonis keened, a sharp, wavering sound. 

"It won't work,” said a new voice -- but no it wasn’t, it wasn’t new at all. “You're good, but even you can't kill someone who's already dead." 

Garrus jolted, his breath tangling in his throat, cold all over and weightless, the floor disappearing under his feet. No _, no._ He turned slowly, his gun falling to his side, forgotten. 

"Hey, boss," said Weaver. 


	46. Chapter 46

Impossible to forget, after the first time, what it felt like to get shot: shields hissing as they bled off the worst of the kinetic energy, armor cracking if the shields died, heat and an endless, weightless drop if the shot got through to actual hide and bone. 

_Already dead._

Garrus knew from long, long experience that there was always a second, a half-heartbeat, when you knew what had happened, but your nerves hadn't told your brain you were supposed to be in agony. Didn't matter who shot him, didn't matter if it was a Scimitar or a Kessler — always, that last painless moment while he waited for his body to catch up, dread pooling at the base of his spine. 

No one had fired a shot. He held the only gun, and its heat sink sang cold and unused through his glove. But he felt that empty, expectant moment anyways, a space hollowed out in his chest, ready to welcome the pain in when it arrived. 

It came slowly; no need to rush, now. Garrus felt it rise out of the far corners of the base: out of the kitchen where the tiles still wore two sets of bloody handprints; from the broken, shattered staircase; from under the torn couches and from inside the looted cabinets; and down from the squad's old room. This pain had curled itself into the chair where he used to sit and waited, patiently, for him to come home. 

The air rushed out of him silently as the pain landed under his ribs and tightened its fists on his heart. Garrus opened his mouth, but he had no idea what he wanted to say. What he _could_ say, as the final armor between him and the last four months began to splinter?  

_Dead. Already dead._

Garrus believed in the simplest answer to a question: _Where were you? What were you doing? What happened?_ Even now, a part of him still didn't blame the Council for dismissing Shepard's accusation of Saren out of hand. She’d been charismatic enough to sway him, but her evidence had been a dream and a few words from a coward -- stacked again Saren's reputation, the threat of sleeping machines waking up to destroy the galaxy meant less than nothing. The only thing that had kept Garrus from dismissing her too had been the itch along the inside of his cowl, the one that said _there's more to this, keep looking._ Charismatic or not, Shepard had sounded like a madwoman -- but that itch had kept him alive in the past, so he listened, silently, and wondered. 

Sometimes, the simplest answer was wrong, and when Garrus had found himself in the base with the last breaths of his _family_ filling his lungs, it was so damn _easy_ to believe Sidonis had sold them all out and run. So he'd believed it, carried it, let it seal his heart against the galaxy, against _Shepard_ , and let the dream of his hunt keep him going. There'd be justice, someday, bloody, messy justice. He’d be the one to deliver it, and the only one left to enjoy the silence afterwards. 

But now? 

_Sidonis, already dead. Can that mean —_

"No," he finally managed, nerveless fingers clenching around his gun -- but his back was still straight, and that counted for something. There had to be a way to see this through, had to be. "You're not —" His voice, stripped of all but the lowest subvocals, sounded muffled and weak in his ears, nothing like how he’d once spoken in this room. 

The itch again, almost faint enough to ignore: _there's something here. Listen._

"Not real?" said Weaver. She cocked her head, a smile quirking the corners of her mouth. "Not here? Not dead? Sorry, boss. I am definitely real, I am definitely here, and I am definitely —" 

Sidonis' keen broke into a cry. Garrus shuddered at the sound, and the fog in his head evaporated. He could still take the shot, just to be sure: it didn't even have to be fatal. Might be better if it wasn't, now that he thought of it. Just enough to knock Sidonis off his feet, get him to shut his lying mouth, all for the pleasure, the satisfaction, of seeing his blood spattered blue and hot against the wall behind him. 

Garrus lifted his arm. He barely felt the pistol's weight, or its shape inside his curled fingers. Weightless or not, it'd still fire, and then he'd know if he'd really finished what Shepard's death had started two and a half years ago. 

"—dead," Weaver finished, in the silence. "I'm definitely dead, boss. And so's he. Weren't you listening?" 

How many times had Garrus thought he'd gone crazy, over the past three years? Too many to count; he'd need to borrow fingers and toes from Shepard to count them all. The trip through the Conduit, facing down Saren in the garden, waking up to find Shepard sitting on his bed, it had all been a warm-up for this: the moment he really lost his mind. 

Would it be quieter if he did? No more fighting, no more doubt and guilt -- he could stay here, and keep talking to Weaver, and the rest of the squad -- 

_No._

"Dead or not," Garrus said, forcing the words out of his throat. "He _deserves_ to pay, not walk away so easy, he —" 

"It's funny how death gives you a sense of perspective,” interrupted Weaver. “You learn all kinds of weird shit." Her feet gritted in the dust on the floor, and then her hand wrapped around his wrist, surprisingly strong. "All those shitty vids and books got _that_ right, at least. So, maybe put down the gun and _listen_." 

Garrus let Weaver tug his arm back to his side, but he kept his hand tight around the pistol's grip, his finger on the trigger. One second; that'd be all he needed to blow the bastard's head off, and Weaver couldn't hold him back if he decided to end this, even if it meant no answers, no truth. Blood would have to be enough. 

Weaver made a sharp, exasperated sound and let go of Garrus' arm. "Didn't you hear me? How can I make this _any_ clearer?" She stepped around Garrus, and stood with her back to Sidonis. It wouldn't block a headshot, but the message couldn't have been clearer. "He's _dead_ , boss." Her mouth trembled, and her eyes cut away for an instant, but then her gaze fell back on Garrus', hard and glittering. "And I thought you wanted answers." 

"I want —" Garrus' voice choked itself, too many questions fighting for space in his throat: _how? Why? Why did you come here, Weaver?_

_Where are the others?_

At the top of the stairs, the shadows lifted, folding in on themselves, but when Garrus followed the movement, there was nothing but an empty, broken bookshelf on the landing. Just a trick of the dying lights. 

"Put the gun away, boss," said Weaver, gently. She took a step toward him, almost smiling, and a knife-sharp memory slashed through Garrus' head: Weaver at her bench, tongue caught between her teeth, fingers hidden in a pile of circuits. "You don't need it."

The gentleness caught Garrus where more of Weaver's brittle, pitiless sarcasm and frustration wouldn't; she had been so many things when she was alive, but she had never been gentle, just like Shepard was never gentle — unless someone was hopeless. After everything, Garrus had come back to the beginning: standing hopeless and alone on Omega, talking to a dead woman. 

Behind Weaver, Sidonis keened again, the sound fraying into silence, but Garrus barely heard over the rush and heave of his pulse. 

_Give it a try, Garrus,_ said Shepard. _What's it hurt to listen? If you're going to take the shot, make sure it's perfect._

Maybe, he thought, he wasn't quite hopeless. A few kilometers away, Shepard lay on Mordin's exam table, slowly thawing. He hadn't lost her. Not this time. 

_Not such a bad thing to have Miranda on our side, is it, Garrus?_

He inhaled slowly, waiting, testing. At this range, he couldn't miss any of Sidonis' emotions, grief or fury or the telltale sour note of a lie. The air flowed into him, dead and dusty, with nothing but the dull, fading scent of his own anger and confusion in it. 

"Tell me," he said, after the pinhole in his throat opened, and let the words escape. Slowly, he slid his pistol back into its holster. The magnetic clamps clicked into place, and he let his arm fall loose to his side. 

_You must go back to the beginning_ , the spirit had said, as if that solved anything. Here he was, empty-handed, every dream of justice torn from his reach, but a thick layer of numb exhaustion settled over him, and all he felt was the dim, familiar stirring of grief. 

At least now, he might be mourning the right thing. 

Had a part of him always known, and waited silently for the rest of him to catch up after this one, perfect shot? Better question: _should_ he have known, or even considered the possibility? 

_Getting sloppy_ , said Shepard, closer now. _Not that I've got room to judge. We're all at the mercy of hindsight._

Weaver glanced over her shoulder at Sidonis, and Garrus felt an acid wave of envy pass through him: he remembered that silent communication, the way the squad could share an entire story with one look, and how, even then, he'd been outside of it. Still the boss, even now. 

Sidonis' mandibles trembled, a movement so slight only another turian would have noticed it. Garrus breathed deep, and thought he smelled blood, far down below the dust and ash. 

"It had already happened by the time I got to the bridge," Sidonis said, as if every word burned his tongue as he said it, but when he met Garrus' gaze, he didn't falter. 

*** 

_The decoys had already been in place before they got to Sidonis, a line thrown out on the chance that some curious fish would take the bait, and bite. It was sheer luck Sidonis was the one caught — sheer bad luck, cosmically bad luck, and he might almost have had a chance if he hadn't run. Nothing called the predators down more than looking like you were scared of being eaten._

_Sidonis didn't want to be eaten. He didn't want to die, either, but he knew that was already a done deal by the time Garm walked into the room, trailed by Tarak. The krogan took one look at him, and spat to the side._

_"This isn't Archangel." Garm grunted. "This is some scrawny piece of pyjak shit." He aimed a lazy kick at Sidonis' side, laughing when it knocked the air out of Sidonis' lungs and he writhed, gasping, on the dirty floor._

Don't be sick, don't be sick _, Sidonis told himself, with the last part of his brain that wasn't blurred by pain._ It'll only make things worse.

_How they could be worse, he didn't want to know. He just wanted it over. Garrus would come looking for him soon, full of righteous anger, but not soon enough._

_Tarak sneered, his face wavering in Sidonis' vision. "And how do you figure that? He's a turian, Archangel's a turian. And this one_ ran _. You think there’s more than one turian on this station who’s been pulling this shit?"_

_"Only one who's stupid enough to try," Garm growled back. Light-headed and breathless, Sidonis swallowed the urge to yell at them to shut the hell up. Better to stay quiet, and wait until they got bored with him, and then just pass out quietly, to where nothing hurt._

_"You want to know how I'm sure?" Garm knelt beside Sidonis, and dug a heavy hand into the soft skin inside Sidonis' cowl. "He doesn't_ smell _like Archangel. I chased that bastard around Omega for hours. I know how he smells."_

_Sidonis shut his eyes on Garm's smile._ But you didn't catch him _, he thought, biting down on a scream as Garm's fingers dug deeper into his skin._ You didn't catch Garrus, and you don't know where he is. You're fucked.

_"Has he talked?" Tarak demanded. "Either we get the location from him, or we kill him. I'm tired of playing games with Archangel."_

_"I've got something to make him talk," said Garm, hot, sour breath blowing into Sidonis' face as he leaned close. “Time to pay Archangel back for that damn chase --”_

_"If you two are done," said Jaroth, from the doorway. "Give me his damn omnitool. It's what I've been saying this whole time." The salarian shifted, his face wrinkling as he sneered down at Sidonis. “Unless you want to play a little more?”_

No. No. _Sidonis opened his eyes, a last surge of adrenaline giving him the strength to struggle against Garm's grip, scrabbling at the air as Garm snapped off his omnitool and tossed it over his shoulder._

_He'd kept his mouth shut, he hadn't talked, and now they'd kill him anyways and they'd kill the squad. They'd kill the sisters and Vortash and Erash and oh, spirits, they'd kill Weaver and Butler and they'd kill Garrus last, they'd make him watch while the squad died, and all because Sidonis had run instead of walked._

_"Look at that," said Garm, obscenely, endlessly delighted. "Little pyjak's got some fight left in him. Sure you don't want to talk?"_

_Again. They were taking his family away_ again _. Sidonis just needed a knife, and he'd carve out both Garm's eyes, cut them out at the root so they couldn't grow back. Not again._

_"We'll let you live if you tell us," said Garm._

_Before Sidonis could spit his reply —_ never, just kill me — _Tarak burst out laughing, and finally stepped into view. "Don't lie, Garm," he said. "Just get it over with. We'll have what we need in ten minutes."_

_"Seven," called Jaroth._

_Garm rumbled something Sidonis couldn't hear, then he grabbed Sidonis under the fringe and slammed him, face-first, into the filthy tiles. Darkness rushed up, too fast, too solid, and Sidonis fractured and scattered, his last thought of the stairs in the base, leading up into nothing._

_***_

_Six minutes later, Sidonis stood over his own body, listening as the mercs planned — and then he ran, knowing no one would follow._

_***_

_Dead. Dead this whole time._  A cold breeze circled his feet, dragging dust and loose stones with it, but Garrus barely felt it through the last distant shattering of his armor. His pauldrons and chestpiece held solid, but the armor he had counted on, long before he knew it was there, that had splintered, and sent the shards deep in his chest. 

For four months, the promise of revenge has been his final protection. Against grief, against the looming threat of near-certain death at the hands of the Collectors. Against Shepard, too, and her second resurrection — a resurrection he'd hated, he knew, because it wasn't just for him. Two years, she'd been his, all his, and he'd gotten greedy. He'd been careless, and he'd been happy, and look what that got him: a murdered squad, and the lingering doubt that all that time had been a dream, or a lie. 

"I know there's no way to make up for what I did — for what I didn't do." Sidonis edged around Weaver, hands spread wide, supplicating. "But for whatever it's worth, I'm sorry. I'm so _damn_ sorry." His voice broke  

"Sidonis —" said Weaver, warningly, but she cut herself off, and didn't meet Garrus' gaze when he looked at her. 

"He needs to know." Sidonis shifted, shadows falling in heavy folds over his shoulder and cowl. "This isn't about being _saved_ , Garrus." He shook his head. "This is a warning." 

"A favor," added Weaver, wrapping her arms around her chest. Huddled into herself, she looked smaller than ever, messy hair tumbling down to hide her face. The urge to grab her and run struck Garrus, all razor-sharp urgency; if he ran now, and didn't stop, how far could he get? 

_Still telling yourself you can save her_ , he thought. _You can't. Keep moving forward._

"A warning for what?" he asked, the cop's curiosity rising past the regret, the pain, the damned _hope_ that this wasn't another lie. Curiosity could be armor, too. 

"You know what they do, the —" Sidonis' hands sketched a vague shape in the air, as his mandibles tightened in frustration. "Don't carry it," he said, after a long silence that scraped past Garrus' ears. "It's not worth it, all that anger, it'll just —" 

"You deserve it," Garrus said, finally recognizing what was left, now that the anger woven through his muscles had begun to fade: desolation. Pure, complete desolation. Who was he without his anger? Not Archangel, not anymore. Garrus? No; not the failed cop, the imperfect soldier. Not even something between those two extremes. 

He was empty, just a suit of broken armor built around a fresh set of scars. 

_Now that's just maudlin_ , said Shepard, so close he could almost imagine her hand against his neck, cool and clean. _But it's got a certain poetry, even if we both know it's wrong. I know what you are, Garrus._

_What's that?_ he thought at her, so relieved to hear her again he almost forgot the two people standing in front of him. 

_My partner. Now let it go. They’re right. It wasn't your fault._

"It wasn't your fault," said Weaver, gently. She reached out, and wrapped thin fingers around his wrist. Her hand didn't quite reach, but the solid weight steadied Garrus, even as Shepard's voice faded. "Come on, boss. There's enough shit out there that wants to drag you under. Don't let it." 

"That's your warning?" Garrus said, pulling his arm out of Weaver's grip reluctantly. "Forgive myself, and it all goes away? It's not that simple. It's not that _easy._ " 

_Usually, I'd agree with you,_ came Shepard's voice. _But for once, Garrus, I think you can trust this. What'll you do if you can't blame Sidonis? You've already blamed yourself, too. Listen to the kid. Don't let it drag you down. Going to need you when I wake up._

"Sometimes," said Sidonis, and now his subvocals thrummed with something beyond guilt, beyond anger — resignation, or exhaustion. "Sometimes it is, Garrus." He opened his hands, green eyes bleached white by the flickering lights overhead. "I'm sorry. I should have…I don't know. I should have done something. And…I don't blame you for blaming me. I could only get you out." 

Garrus swallowed, a thick, bitter knot filling his throat. "Only me," he said. "Why not the others? Why not even _try_?" 

"I did," said Sidonis, his subvocals fading, leaving only the thinnest, most weary notes under his words. "No one saw me but you. There wasn't time to tell you, to make them see — but I should have tried." 

"Damn right you should have," said Garrus, with an echo of his old anger. "You bastard, you —"

Weaver shuddered, shifting away from  the stairs and the heavy shadows filling them. "Time's up," she said. 

"We're not done," Garrus snapped, but shut his mouth so quickly his teeth sank into his tongue. 

Weaver turned back to him, her face stony. "Sorry, boss," she said, her voice utterly flat, her body totally still. “If we could tell you more, we would, but this is as much as we can get away with. _Let it go_.” 

“What’s stopping you?” Garrus felt the dread shimmer over his back and shoulders again: Shepard had stood that still, when she was dead. 

_So why wouldn't Weaver?_ he thought. _After all, she's dead, too_. 

_Acceptance is a good first step_ , whispered Shepard. _Keep going, Garrus._

“I said, what’s --” 

“That’snot a question you want to ask,” said Sidonis. 

"So this is it?" Garrs said, stung past numb bewilderment, past frustration. Sidonis’ words barely registered. “More non-answers? More _mysteries_? And you two move on, or whatever it is, now that he got to tell his story?" 

"It's not that simple anymore," said Sidonis, a fragile, glassy sorrow at the edge of his words. "We don't —"

"Don't let it drag you down," Weaver added, in her new, flat voice. "There's still a lot of work to do, boss. That’s all we can, I’m sorry --" 

The shadows on the stairs rose up in a thick wave, rolling toward the common room, slow and silent. Garrus' eyes were drawn helplessly to the movement — but when he turned back, Weaver and Sidonis had disappeared, nothing left in their place but dust and cold air. 

"I'm not —" He swallowed again, past the knot that filled his throat and chest to bursting, and pressed his hand over his face. "I'm not crazy," he said, in almost a whisper. 

"Well," said a low voice behind him, "no one said you were, Garrus." 

He spun around, reaching for his pistol, but froze when he saw Shepard smiling at him, crooked and warm, and holding out her hand. 

_Back to the beginning,_ the spirit had said, and here he was, trying to find his footing, _again_ , staring at Shepard as she waited for him to speak. Her eyes glinted silver in the flickering lights, and she didn’t smile, but she was _here_ , she was _his,_ and somewhere, far below the numbness still blunting his nerves, he felt his body catch up. Simple, fresh pain, as familiar as the first time he’d stood here and watched her -- Shepard, impossible and undeniable. 

Here _they_ were. He breathed in, secretly relishing the quick, cold sting of her smile, and reached out to her. 

"I have to make this quick," said Shepard. She wrapped her hand around Garrus' hand, the old gesture so well-worn that he closed his eyes to ride out the sick wave of vertigo. Shepard, here, in the base, her fingers entwined with his, enemies just beyond the doors. "There's not a lot of time." 

Garrus opened his eyes on Shepard's smile, and hissed in a breath as he saw the white, frozen skin at her eyes and mouth. "Shepard —" he said, lifting his free hand to touch her cheek, but she turned her head, her smile disappearing. 

"You know the story," she said. "Not as bad as the last time you saw me like this, right?" 

_Over the hills and far away._ "Not as bad," he agreed, squeezing her fingers. "Still don't like it." 

That earned him a faint laugh. "Think about how I feel," she said. "But like I said — not a lot of time." Her pale eyes fell back on Garrus, bright and calculating, and even the cool weight of her hand in his couldn't banish the chill that danced up his spine. "Garrus," she said. "I — god, I hate this, there's still so much I don't _know_ , dammit, and I don't know what I'll remember when I wake up —" 

"If," he said, a lifetime of pessimism forcing the words through his teeth. "You _fell_ , Shepard. Spirits, you're _frozen_. You should be dead." 

" _Should_ being the operative word," she said, shrugging one-shouldered. "But I _will_ be back." A shudder wracked her body, her mouth twisting. 

"Shepard?" he said, squeezing her fingers, sharp and hard, to get her attention. His pulse beat heavy in his ears. "What is it? Shepard?" 

She shook her head, squeezing back. "Miranda's really too efficient at this whole resurrection routine," she said. "Guess it's a good thing I know the signs by now." She tilted her head back to meet his gaze. "I came to find you again," she said, in a softer voice. "You can't keep carrying it, Garrus. Trust me. Let dead worlds be dead. It wasn't your fault I died, and it wasn't your fault the squad died. Hey.” She touched his face with just her fingertips. “Look at me." 

Garrus tugged his hand out of hers. "Easy for you to say," he muttered. "You're —" 

"— speaking from experience." Shepard's hand curved over the bandaged side of his face. "On Haestrom, they nearly got me. Dead worlds. Akuze." Her thumb stroked the edge of his bandage, too light to hurt, almost too light to feel. "If we keep giving them ammunition, we'll be finished before we get started." 

The temptation to lean into her touch vanished. " _Them_? What are you talking about?" When Shepard hesitated, Garrus sighed and looked away, back toward the stairs and the patient shadows waiting there. “I’m tired of mysteries, Shepard.” 

“I’m _trying_.” Shepard’s eyes closed, a muscle jumped in her neck. “There are things I can’t tell you,” she said, when her eyes opened. “I don’t know why, I just know they’re there, and I --” She shivered, and the muscle jumped again. “If I push too hard, I’ll slip, and…” Her eyes slid toward the stairs as another shiver wracked her. “Best to stick with what I know I can get away with,” she whispered. 

Garrus breathed in slowly as he followed her gaze, but the shadows hadn’t moved, and the rest of the base was as silent and empty as before. “Get away with,” he repeated. “Shepard, I’m not liking the sound of this. You and --” he pushed through the clench in his throat, the thorns pricking in his mouth -- “Weaver, even Sidonis, you couldn’t talk. What the hell is stopping you?” 

She opened her mouth to reply -- Garrus saw the pink tip of her tongue flash between her lips, and her throat moved, but no sound came out. Shepard shuddered, closed her eyes, and opened her mouth again wider, her throat straining now, but nothing happened. 

Nothing at all, except the white skin at her mouth and eyes spread, patches of frost covering her freckles and lips. 

“Spirits,” he said, his gut lurching, and caught her free hand. “All right, point taken, Shepard -- you can stop.” 

With another shudder, Shepard closed her mouth. “Sorry,” she said, her voice pinched thin. “I tried. Still...frozen.” 

The frost receded, laying her freckles bare, and Garrus felt the knotted tension in his gut loosen a fraction. His curiosity snapped at him, hungry for more, but not hungry enough to watch Shepard try again and fail, the frost coating her face as she tried to speak. “It’s fine,” he said, pitching his voice low and comforting, an effort that earned him a raised eyebrow and a knowing look. “What can you tell me?” 

Shepard cupped his jaw and kept their gazes locked, her grip firm but not cruel. "The revenants," she said. "What they want — fear, misery, pain — they can just pull out of our heads. Nor called them _sour_. And I think…it's all connected. I can almost see it, now, like this." She waved an impatient hand at herself, sighing. "A Sarcophagus on Haestrom, and one on the Collector ship…" Shepard turned the wry, crooked, _private_ smile up at him, and Garrus caught his breath. "Not a coincidence," she finished, the smile turning knife-sharp. "Not at all." 

"So what about you?" he asked. "How do you fit in? All of you?" He gestured behind him, to the space where Weaver and Sidonis had stood — spirits help him, where their _ghosts_ had stood. Did he really believe? 

Did he have a choice?

"I think we're part of the problem." Shepard touched the skin around her mouth. "Something's not connected. Something's broken. There's a system, but it's not working the way it should, and — dammit, I can't think, I can't put it together." She raked her free hand through her hair. "I'm sorry, Garrus," she said, her voice grey and exhausted. "I thought I had it, this whole web between us and the Collectors and god, even the Reapers, it all made _sense_ , and I came as fast as I could, and now I'm waking up too soon." 

"Waking up?" Garrus caught the hand at Shepard's mouth, and wrapped both his hands around it. "Back at the clinic?" 

Shepard nodded. Her fingers wove through his, an echo of the old comfort following the movement. This quiet, illicit hand-holding had steadied him, even in the middle of the squad, and let him be the anchor that they needed. Shepard had always been there, cool and unwavering, her voice always at his ear. 

This had been what he'd longed for, even after Ilium: to be _selfish_ and have Shepard all to himself again, instead of sharing her with the rest of the galaxy. Alive, everyone laid claim to a piece of Shepard — the Alliance, the Council, Cerberus, her own guilt — and left her nothing for herself. 

_Or for me,_ Garrus thought, grief ebbing toward nostalgia as she smiled easily up at him. They couldn't get any closer to the _beginning_ than they were at that moment, standing in the wreckage of the base, quiet and wary. The temptation to lean into that feeling, to slip back into the old rhythms, tugged at him, a sweet, plaintive undertow. 

Garrus took a deep breath, and let go of Shepard's hands. He could drown himself trying to chase the comfort, but he'd be damned if he let the squad go that easily. There was no going back. The base was a grave, and Shepard wasn't his. 

And they both had work to do. 

"If I'd just known what to look for the last time…" Shepard gave her head a sharp shake, hair tumbling loose over her shoulders. Garrus' hands closed into tight fists against the impulse to coil the loose strands around his fingers. "Never thought I'd need to have a to-do list when I was dead, but you learn something every day. Right." She lifted her chin, and met his gaze full-on, with her pale eyes burning through the whited skin around them.

"I'm still missing pieces, but the Sarcophagi — they're not for the dead, they're for the living. You put someone in them, and they don't come out as themselves — they're what we saw on Haestrom. The revenants -- they’re still _alive_ , Garrus." She grabbed his hands again, ferociously tight, but Garrus didn't try to pull away. Shepard's gaze held him rooted to the spot; nothing less than a dreadnaught's salvo could have moved him. 

"How?" he asked, his voice low, heavy anxiety pulsing through his words. "No one but the geth have been on Haestrom in _centuries_ , how can they still be alive?" 

"It's a loophole," Shepard said, almost before he finished speaking. “You go in, and you don't die, but you're not _you_ anymore. You belong to something else." She let go of his hands to touch her mouth. "Three guesses." 

"The Reapers," Garrus breathed. "Great." 

"Nothing's ever easy," Shepard said, the old smile curling her mouth under her still-burning eyes. "I — I wish I had more, Garrus. I don't know _why_ , dammit, and I don't know if I'll remember any of this when I wake up." Her mouth trembled, once, and her eyes slid away from his. "That's why I had to tell you. Sorry to dump it all on you, but it's too important to lose. And it’s a place to start." 

Garrus felt the day building under his skin, the urge to howl and tear down the walls of the base barely restrained. Too much had changed; three hours ago, all that had mattered had been putting a bullet through Sidonis' head, and now he had nothing but Shepard and her smile to anchor himself against the sea change in his purpose. He could postpone the reckoning, just to hear her speak and feel her hands on his again, to know that he had _his_ Shepard again, but there'd be a price. 

_Always is_ , he thought, and brought his attention back to Shepard. 

"Go ahead," he said, trying for an ease he didn't feel. "You always did like leaving the dirty work to me." 

Too easy, to slip into memory, and to forget that the base was a grave now. Shepard's gaze flattened — she knew it too, but before she could call him out, Garrus took a step back and folded his arms over his chest. 

"So what's the point of them? What can they do, these…Sarcophagi?" The word turned awkwardly in his mouth, and left his tongue sore after he'd spoken it. As for the answer to his question, it came into his head the moment Shepard replied. 

"Think about it, Garrus. Saren, Benezia, even that Rana Thanapotis. What did they all have in common?" 

"Indoctrination," he said, dread sparking along his nerves. "Damn." 

"It leaves you just enough of yourself to keep you useful," Shepard said. "But after a while, I think, you go…sour. And then they don't need you anymore." 

"But what about everything else? Haestrom, all those memories — they tried to get —" Garrus stopped himself, and swallowed hard. The memory of thin fingers trying to pry Shepard's mouth open was still too fresh, the voices too loud inside his head. 

Shepard's mouth hardened as her eyes went unfocused, drifting past his shoulder. "Damn. I can't…it's something, a weapon. Plant one of them in a city, and let them play." She shuddered again, and wrapped her arms around herself. "Hell of a demoralizer." 

"You don't really think the Reapers could do that, do you?" Garrus asked. "Shepard, this is a lot to believe, even for us." 

She laughed, shaking her head at the dusty floor. "Yeah, I know. But it's what I've got. I think Weaver and — I think they wanted to tell you, but they ran out of time." Her eyes lifted to his, unexpectedly warm. "You okay?" she half-whispered. "Garrus, I —" 

"No." He took another step back, his mandibles so tight against his face the muscles underneath ached. "Not here. Maybe later." After he'd had time to parse it, and reordered his world, and washed the stink of Omega off his hide. 

Shepard nodded. "Then…Garrus, you do believe me, don't you?" 

"It's taken some effort," he said, glad he didn't have to try and sound sarcastic; it came to him smoothly, like they were giving each other hell in the Mako on some spirits-forsaken planet. "But I'll get there." 

"Good." She gave him their smile again, sweet and private. "Without you, none of this works." 

"Oh, it'd work," he said, exhausted under his own smile, and suddenly longing for his father. He had no idea what Thrace would make of any of this, but he wanted, so badly, to find out. "It'd just miss a…certain flare." 

"You tell yourself that, Garrus." Shepard stepped into arms'-reach, and ran her hands up to his cowl. "I'm coming back," she whispered, standing on her toes to whisper close to his cheek. "Just…be patient. I'm not this, I know, but I'm trying. And we're still in this together. Always." She kissed him, her mouth still warm, then drew away. “I’ve got you,” she said, her smile faltering. “Don’t forget that.”

"I won’t," Garrus promised. He closed his eyes, and Shepard disappeared, air sighing as it filled her place. 

***  

For a long time, Garrus walked the base, his feet traveling in the old, worn paths. Nothing of value remained; he felt the vicious clutch of fury when he saw the squad's room had been completely trashed, their lockers hacked and emptied. He breathed through it, waiting for his heart to slow, and the fury faded into a quiet, soft-footed grief. 

He would carry that grief for the rest of his life, next to the silent seed of his anger. There’d still been a betrayal, and there would still be a reckoning, a price to pay for holding the day at arms’-length. No knots had come undone, and no great solutions had been discovered. Just more pain, more questions, more longing for what was gone. 

Not just the squad, or this echo of their home, but Archangel itself was gone. Its time had passed, its purpose flared out in one last grand stand against filth and lies. It had been pure, it had been righteous, and where Garrus was going, there was no room for either of those things. Just endless shades of grey. 

Time now to learn how to live with Archangel’s certainty, in the spectrum of choices between black and white. 

Garrus walked, each step a silent goodbye: to the base that had been home for two years; to his dreams of changing Omega for the better; to himself as he had once lived; and to the squad, the brief family, the last pure thing left on Omega.  

He stared for a long time at the shattered bunks before he shut off the flickering lights. Then, he walked down the stairs and out the door, back to Shepard. Archangel was at rest. He — Garrus Vakarian — had work to do. 

 


	47. Chapter 47

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Previously on:** The Collector ship mission ended in disaster, with Shepard lost in the depths of the ship and the rescued turian coming with an unexpected passenger. Returning to Omega to revive Shepard, Garrus is forced to confront the truth about what happened to Archangel’s squad, and Miranda finds herself the focus of a dark gaze while she works with Mordin to bring the commander back to life. Again.

Floating naked in the cryo-revival fluids, Shepard looked almost fragile: all long, slender limbs and concave stomach. Miranda knew how much steel — literal and figurative — lay under Shepard's pallid, translucent skin, but the impression of delicacy was difficult to shake. Especially considering the vast array of bruises covering Shepard's body from heel to chin, clustered heaviest on her left arm. 

"I'm sure we'll see physical evidence of a concussion once she's revived," Miranda said, relieved that this was one thing she wouldn't have to worry about. Shepard collected concussions constantly, indiscriminately; if she had survived this long without suffering the worst effects, Miranda wouldn't let one more bother her. "The bruising along her left side is consistent with landing on that side after a fall." 

Mordin nodded, humming to himself as he typed a line of commands into his omni-tool. Miranda glanced to the display at her left, and nodded once to herself, satisfied that Shepard's core temperature continued to steadily rise. 

Would this be how it always worked? Shepard would die, and freeze, and Miranda would bring her back — all while Shepard remained somehow present, waiting for her body to be ready for her to inhabit again? 

_If you're here now,_ Miranda thought, staring at the shadows of Shepard's ribs, and the hollows near her hipbones, _I'll get to work on the arm first. I know how much you enjoy the ossification treatments_. 

If Shepard hovered nearby — ridiculous thought — she didn't respond. Miranda sighed and began to step away, then paused, her foot an inch from the floor, as she caught a glimpse of Shepard's shoulder.

"Bloody hell," she murmured. Mordin's humming hitched, no doubt as he listened for her to go on, then picked up again as she stayed silent.

Three white pinpricks glowed on the ball of Shepard's shoulder — pinpricks that had frustrated every one of Miranda's attempts to remove them. With every new skin graft, they reappeared overnight, until Miranda finally gave up, and let them linger. 

Now, the longer she stared at them, the more she felt she had missed a crucial link, something to fill in one of the gaps Shepard had undoubtedly left in her story. But what —

An image flickered past her mind's eye, nearly too fast to comprehend: Garrus' hand covering Shepard's shoulder, his fingers spread over her armor. It was only a guess, based on the flimsiest evidence — _sentiment_ — but it slipped perfectly into the empty space in Shepard's story: where, exactly, had she been for those two years? 

Shepard always advocated alliances between humanity and other species, though Miranda would have laid her substantial financial assets on no one knowing just how devoutly Shepard practiced what she preached. 

Any more thought on the subject would have to wait; one of the monitors beeped insistently, and Miranda's attention focused on watching Shepard's temperature rise, fraction upon fraction of a degree.

Over the quiet ticks and whirrs of the medical equipment, Miranda wondered if resurrections were subject to the same kind of stagnation as every other human experience. Would enough of them dull sensation, drain away any delight in coming back to life? Not that Shepard had shown much delight the last time, she mused grimly. 

"Are we all clear?" she asked, and waited for Mordin to echo her in the affirmative before she opened her omni-tool. 

With three keystrokes, Miranda initiated the revival procedure, and stepped back as the unit's walls opaqued and a sheet of hot blue-white light flashed along its length. A headache had spent the last hour building in her temples, no doubt from spending the better part of a day hunched over the controls for the revival unit. Thawing a living creature remained an inexact science — thankfully one that had progressed beyond a handful of hair-dryers and crossed fingers — and monitoring a revival pod required unwavering attention to the smallest fluctuations in temperature. If the extremities thawed too quickly, gangrene could set in; if the subject's core remained cold too long, entire organs would fail utterly. 

A frustrating procedure, but Miranda had a wealth of experience with those. No one, not on Omega, not on the _Normandy_ — perhaps no one in Council space — was better-equipped to perform this procedure. What was another resurrection, once the impossible had already been accomplished once?

_A massive and literal pain in the neck_ , Miranda thought. She dug into a tight knot in her shoulder blade, grimacing as the muscles slowly loosened. She could have handed control of the revival unit over to Mordin at any point; the mechanism was his design, and he possessed every bit of focus she did, but an implacable sense of obligation kept her from letting him take over. 

Now, with the lion's share of the work over — the aspects requiring her total attention, at least — she had time to think. Specifically, she had time to regret. 

A few hours ago, allowing Vakarian into Omega alone had seemed the most expedient course of action. He would be occupied by clearing out the particular skeletons lingering in his closet — Miranda's mouth twisted; that metaphor was so on-the-nose it verged on grotesque — and would return to the clinic with a renewed dedication to the mission.

He would return to a revived Shepard. Surely _that_ would put a spring in his step. 

Very expedient, on the surface. 

Vakarian could protect himself; two years as Omega's closest approximation of order had honed his already-substantial experience into a potent arsenal. Archangel's dossier might have been written from a professional distance, but his actions spoke clearly enough. Finding out Archangel and Garrus Vakarian were the same person had been a windfall Miranda never anticipated. 

Of course, in the aftermath, as he and Shepard healed in the _Normandy'_ s medbay, Miranda wondered if that had been part of the Illusive Man's plan all along. Had he known Archangel's identity, and held back to add legitimacy to the mission? Miranda wouldn't have scrupled at doing so, had the position and the knowledge been hers — but even Cerberus' information had limits, and the agents that went to Omega usually did not come back. At least not with all their body parts still connected and functioning. 

No, Vakarian had been a fluke, and his knowledge of Omega would keep him safe. What Miranda regretted was letting him leave alone. Could it have waited, she wondered, watching the steady flare of the catalyzing lights, until Shepard had woken again? 

Possibly. But she hadn't taken the time to debate the advantages, and so she had let him go on his miserable errand by himself, on a station that hated him. 

_Not completely alone_. She made a moue of distaste. Eventually, at least, she had thought to send Krios to tail him at a discreet distance. And there were other, subtler safeguards. Miranda glanced at Mordin's back, then cleared her throat. "EDI?" 

"Yes, Operative Lawson?" 

"Status update on Officer Vakarian," Miranda said. The humming behind her hitched, then resumed. Miranda frowned in Mordin's direction — he'd listened without comment as EDI provided updates every ten minutes on Vakarian from the moment the turian left the clinic. Why react now? 

_Because now is the first time I've asked. Damn tells_.

"Officer Vakarian is still in the remains of the old Archangel base. He is in no physical distress, and all his biometrics are within acceptable ranges for a turian of his age." A pause, so brief Miranda almost missed it, and EDI continued. "He has, however, unholstered his pistol." 

"What?" Miranda looked up at the ceiling, startled. "Has anyone entered the base?"

"No," EDI said. Miranda's heart rate began to drop. "I detect no life signs beyond Officer Vakarian's, and the base's defenses have been deactivated. Mr. Krios has observed no lifeforms approaching the base. To all appearances, Officer Vakarian is alone." 

Miranda stopped herself before she exhaled audibly. The deliberate phrasing on EDI's part — _to all appearances_ — left gooseflesh prickling over Miranda's skin.

_And I let him go alone._ Miranda let her breath out in a slow, silent stream, and risked another glance at Mordin. The salarian still hummed, and seemed unaware a second layer of communication had occurred between Miranda and EDI. Thank god for small mercies. 

"Understood." She picked over her next words carefully, one eye on Mordin. "Please continue to monitor all audio-visual frequencies. That will be all, EDI." 

"Of course, Operative Lawson." 

Now Miranda only had to hope that EDI had understood the oblique command: _record everything, and warn me if anything threatening shows up._

_Though that is a rather broad criteria._

Sending Krios to observe from a distance had been prudent — the assassin was dedicated, and reliable, and _quiet_ — but he should have followed Vakarian from the moment he left the clinic, not been sent as an afterthought. Why hadn't she thought this through before sending Vakarian out on his own? 

Because Shepard had filled her head, like the commander had every day for the past two and a half years, and because she had let her personal loyalty cloud her judgment. 

And, because whatever Vakarian had to face down in that base, he had to face it alone, with only the armor on his back to protect him. No one could walk that stretch of hell with him, just as no one could walk Akuze or Alchera for Shepard, or the Lazarus station for her. Krios could only guard him from without. 

Miranda sighed, knowing Mordin would hear, but past caring. The monitors whirred on, the lights in the pod flashed, and for the first time in years, Miranda felt the agony of indecision and doubt. 

Had she done the right thing? 

Yes, she had, for the mission, and for Shepard — but that was no comfort, as she thought of Vakarian, alone, only a pistol between him and whatever waited, patiently, for him to come home. 

The boundary lines between regret and remorse blurred so quickly. She should have planned for all possible outcomes from the beginning. Injecting Krios into the bizarre half-dream that shrouded Shepard and Vakarian could prove more disastrous than no action at all. The assassin would protect Vakarian, from all organic, sentient threats — but what could any of them do, against threats that were neither? 

_You landed me in the middle of a mystery, and I_ hate _mysteries_ , Miranda thought, watching Shepard's hair wave in the gentle chemical currents. _The least you could do is wake up, so I don't feel as though I've made a mess of everything._

In answer, the display farthest to her left shrilled once, and the lights within the pod abruptly stopped. 

"Well," Miranda murmured, in the silence left behind, "if _that_ was all you needed, Shepard." Mordin blinked at her, expressionless, and she sighed once more. "It seems our patient is ready to wake up," she said, sending the command to drain the pod. "Shall we begin?" 

*** 

Nostalgia rarely formed a part of Miranda's days, but the longer she worked in Mordin's lab, the more she longed for her old Lazarus station facilities. Or, at the very least, for their light fixtures. 

_Perhaps all of Mordin's patients had extreme sensitivity to light,_ she thought, then frowned. Shepard's irreverence had apparently rubbed off on her as well. What would she absorb next — Shepard's propensity for head injuries? Shepard's total lack of self-preservation? Shepard's guilt at having been the one to live? 

_Don't think I haven't seen it_. _You have survivor's guilt written on every one of your psych evals — but you were too valuable to lose, so they kept you in the field._ Miranda waved away the x-rays — Shepard had a half-dozen other broken bones, to be dealt with once she woke — and brought up the scan of Shepard's nervous system. That, mercifully, appeared intact and undamaged, beside the ubiquitous concussion. 

_Thank you for sparing me that much work, Shepard._ She half-smiled at Shepard's still face as the chemicals drained from the unit, surprised by her warm, entirely unprofessional relief at the thought of Shepard's revival. 

_Sentiment will slow you down_ , said her father. 

Miranda didn't bother replying, not even silently. Her father wasn't worth the energy it took to imagine his face — but his voice, once summoned, refused to leave. 

_"If they cannot excel with you, leave them behind, Miranda. There'll be no room for pity where you're going."_ _His hand reflected dimly in the window. Miranda barely saw it, too focused on the mad fluttering wings against the glass._

"Operative Lawson," said Mordin. "Core temperature has reached optimal level for defibrillation. Final stage of process ready to begin." 

Miranda nodded, silently grateful for the interruption. Her father's voice faded away, along with the sound of wings, and left only the sounds of the machinery around her, and the quiet murmurs of activity in the clinic outside. 

Working with frozen tissue presented unique challenges; working with frozen tissue belonging to a living body presented even more rarefied ones. Miranda had planned for the possibility of losing one of Shepard’s limbs or organs, and both Mordin's clinic and the _Normandy's_ medbay had cloning facilities -- but they couldn't afford the delay of growing a new pair of lungs or a new arm. With a little luck, such efforts would be unnecessary.

She frowned over the last readout, her stomach knotting at the results. Not even a little luck was on their side. "We're going to lose her eyes," she said, her mind already calculating how long it would take to clone a new set. Twenty-four hours, maximum, if she wanted to include the optical recall hardware, and Shepard could remain conscious while the eyes grew. Perhaps a _very_ little luck, then. 

If that was the only obstacle to her recovery, then Miranda would count Shepard and herself damn lucky. So why the cold prickle at the back of her neck? 

"Easy enough to deal with," said Mordin, cheerfully. Miranda glanced his way, and found him still smiling as he moved to another monitor, adjusting the diagnostics. "Doctor Chakwas can begin procedure on _Normandy_. Save time." 

"Agreed." Miranda smoothed away a few dark drops of water from under Shepard's left eye. How would Shepard feel, to wake out of one darkness, and arrive in another? 

_Not my job to speculate_ , Miranda told herself. _All these supernatural business is a bad influence._

Perhaps it was better to stop now, she mused. How many times could she expect to defy death? Once was enough; she had refused to accept death, and succeeded. Maybe now she should simply let Shepard _rest._ They had the _Normandy_ , they had her squad, and surely Tali'Zorah and Vakarian would remain to fight Shepard's enemies, even if Shepard herself was gone. 

It might even be easier to keep them, if Shepard simply didn't waken. Guilt could be a powerful motivator, when applied correctly. Shepard had earned her rest, more than anyone in the galaxy, and they could carry on the fight themselves, in her name. 

_The hell with that_. Miranda slowly lifted her hand from Shepard's cheek. The harsh chemical scent clung to her gloves along with the chill, but she hardly noticed. That line of thought seemed so plausible, even _kind_ — too plausible, now that Miranda had taken a moment to fully understand what was passing through her mind. Letting Shepard die meant throwing away two years, a billion credits, her greatest triumph — and her friend's life. 

_A friend_? whispered a cold, mocking voice, right against her ear. _Oh, Miranda, such sentiment. I expected better from you. You have no friends. You have no equal. It's how I made you. My legacy is not for the soft-hearted._

An old, familiar anger awoke — _you made me, but you don't own me, and I left your house_ — hot enough to drive a flush into her cheeks. All those powerless years, a bird in a miserable, ever-shrinking cage, cold and starved and colorless. She could scream, thinking of her life under her father's heavy hand. 

The worst part — he might be right. It might be easier to let Shepard die, to end the great experiment and take their chances against the Collectors. But it wouldn't be _right_ , and _easy_ held no attraction for Miranda. She'd come too far to let her father dictate her choices ever again. 

She drew in a quick breath, then choked on it as a noise, barbed and sharp as broken glass, shook the air around her and the floor under her feet. Her hand moved on reflex to her pistol, and from the corner of her eye, Mordin mirrored her movement across the revival unit. The noise vanished seconds later, the air vibrating with its abrupt absence — nothing but the sudden, tight pain in her temples and ears, and an icy touch tracing a line over the nape of her neck. Both disappeared as quickly as the noise, with only a dull thud in her skull remaining.

Miranda exhaled. An old lab, on an old, ill-used station: she shouldn't be surprised at odd noises, only that it had taken so long for one to appear. The touch skimmed the back of her neck one last time, then faded. Holding back a shiver, Miranda chanced a covert look across the lab. Nothing moved in the lab, other than herself, Mordin, and the flickering lights inside the pod. No one, and nothing — not even the spirit. 

_That may be a good sign_. Miranda cast a final look around the room and made a mental note to investigate the spirit's continued absence when time permitted — a laughable idea, really, but a necessary effort — then turned back to the pod and the lights within.

"Interesting," said Mordin after a moment's pause that he spent squinting up at the ceiling. 

Before Miranda could prompt him to continue, her ears went dead. Miranda could hear _nothing_ , only the feathering beat of her pulse — a sound like wings, beating against a windowpane. 

_Her father's hand fell, blood on the glass and his fingers —_

Miranda's ears ached with the endless noise of wings, so many damn _wings_ , all of them beating out of time, a mass of dusty dry noises, why couldn't they just _stop_? 

She turned away from the table, her balance disappearing under a wave of vertigo. Mordin's hand gripped her shoulder, at the corner of her vision he mouthed her name, but she shrugged him away and tried to push back against the massive pressure and noise filling her ears. Blood on the window, and yet the wings kept beating, coming closer, ever closer. 

A ceiling duct burst open with a shriek, and a black, writhing mass tumbled out, wings beating against the floor. Her father's hand fell again, and again, blood spattered on glass, and she would not cry, she _would not_ — 

_My legacy, Miranda._

"— ative Lawson!" Mordin called, and the pressure vanished, as abruptly as it had arrived. 

Miranda inhaled slowly, fighting a fresh surge of vertigo, and raised one shaking hand to her throat. 

Across the lab, the broken duct swung lazily, with nothing beneath it but empty, dusty floor. 

"My apologies." Miranda let her hand fall back to her side. Her ears still ached, but a hot spike of anger drove the pain back. _How dare they try to_ scare _me_? she thought acidly, not sure who _they_ were, and not caring. _I will do my job, and I will_ not _be toyed with_. Clearly, so anything listening could hear her, she added, "Let's wake the commander."

*** 

Shepard screamed when she woke. Screamed, with lungs still raw and cold, and then reached up to claw at her throat. 

"Stop!" Miranda lunged over the edge of the pod, grabbing for Shepard's hands before real damage could be done — and then her stomach rolled, as the first red weals flared on Shepard's neck. "Shepard, stop! You're fine, you're on Omega, you need to _calm down_!" 

The upgrades she'd installed with so much satisfaction — skin weave, bone weave, muscle grafts, enhanced tissue regeneration — fought her efforts to stop Shepard from gouging at her face. It took all her strength just to keep Shepard's fingers from digging deep into the flesh on her cheeks and chin. Even then, with every muscle holding Shepard back, Miranda knew she was only marking time. 

"Shepard, _please_ ," she panted, bracing her legs against the pod and pulling at Shepard's arms. "You're safe! You're awake! Stop this!" A monitor wailed behind her, then another, and another — warnings about heart rate and respiration that Miranda couldn't acknowledge. Shepard's head hit the bottom of the tank, again and again, and her feet splashed in the last of the revival chemicals as she struggled to tear herself out of Miranda's grip. 

Mordin hovered nearby, his omni-tool casting vivid waves of light over Shepard's pallid body. "Similar to a panic attack," he said, his voice tight. "Not a seizure, but an unusual reaction, could be a result of —"

"Help me hold her down!" Miranda shouted. Even this panic was familiar; Wilson's shadow moved in Miranda's memory, and a seething, bitter betrayal blotted out her mind for an instant before Shepard's struggles brought her back to the present crisis. Mordin braced himself on the unit's opposite side, and pushed Shepard backwards, as careful as he could be of her broken arm. 

_I need to remember to thank him later for knowing when to shut up_ , Miranda thought, and used all her weight to push Shepard backwards. Shepard shrieked as the movement jarred her broken arm, the fresh wave of pain cutting through where Miranda's voice hadn't, and clutched at her arm with her right hand. 

Four seconds, maybe five, had passed since the pod opened, and that had been long enough for Shepard to dig bloody marks from chin to collarbone, and open a fresh gouge in her bottom lip. Her breath came ragged and shallow, and Miranda didn't need to check any of the still-shrilling monitors to know Shepard's heart rate was dangerously fast. 

"Shepard." She kept a firm hold of Shepard's right arm as she eased it down to Shepard's side and held it there. "You must calm down. You're all right. Breathe, please." 

On the other side of the pod, Mordin gingerly let go of Shepard's arm, and began to form a makeshift cast with his omni-tool's fabricator. The sweet, burnt-leaves scent of omni-gel filled the clinic, and the familiar smell seemed to soothe Shepard. At the very least, she didn't resist while Mordin attached the cast, apart from a few gasping breaths. 

Miranda tasted blood as she swallowed. Somewhere in the struggle, she'd bitten the inside of her cheek, and a faint throb of pain pulsed in counterpoint to her headache. She swallowed again, and focused on Shepard's battered face. Under the scratches, a deep-purple bruise covered the left side of Shepard's face from temple to chin, and the ear on that side had been crushed against her head. Miranda squashed a burst of pity at the the thought of Shepard wandering alone and in pain, through the dark. If anyone could handle that, it was Shepard. 

_And Vakarian_. She gestured at Mordin, who vanished from her line of sight long enough to retrieve a thermal blanket. Miranda wrapped Shepard's body in the foil-lined layers herself, mindful of Shepard's arm and bruises, then settled her hand around Shepard's wrist again. After a long moment, where not even Mordin moved or blinked, Shepard nodded, shivering. 

On cue, EDI's detached voice filled the lab. "Operative Lawson, Officer Vakarian is returning to the lab. Mr. Krios is ensuring his path remains unimpeded. Estimated time of arrival: thirty-five minutes." 

Miranda brushed a loose piece of hair out of her face and nodded. Her gaze stayed fixed on Shepard, on the rise and fall of the commander's chest. Her own hands had left bruises on Shepard's arm, but they would fade within a few hours. In any case, Shepard wouldn’t be able to see them. 

The thought gave her an unexpected pang, of mingled guilt and pity, that she couldn’t ignore. 

_Sentiment, Miranda. Avoid it._ The cold voice, and the colder touch on the back of her neck; a pause, and then the voice spoke again. _It would have been easier if you had let her die._

The taste of blood thickened in the back of her mouth. 

"Can you hear me, commander?" Miranda asked, hoping Shepard's title might reach her. 

"Yes," Shepard whispered, her voice a hoarse echo of her normal clear tones. "Hear you. Hear. Sk—" She coughed, wet and wracking, then her body convulsed as she retched, and a mouthful of black, half-frozen water splashed against the side of the tank. "Sk —sk —" 

Another cough, another retch. What was Shepard saying? 

_Ah._ "The squad is fine," Miranda said, holding Shepard down as a spasm wracked the woman's body. "A few were injured in the fall, but they've recovered. No casualties," she added, squeezing lightly when Shepard gasped and shuddered again. The skin under her hand remained still cold and stiff, but Shepard's pulse had gradually begun returning to an acceptable range. 

Shepard nodded — not merely a side-effect of the spasms still rocking her body, but a slow, deliberate movement — and opened her mouth. Miranda counted the seconds while Shepard tried to speak, but only a high, whistling noise left her mouth. 

"You're all right," Miranda squeezed her wrist again, but Shepard jerked her arm out of Miranda's grip and tried again, the whistling noise cracking as she strained to force out the words. Her jaw creaked, her lips stretched till another cut opened at the corner of her mouth and sluggish, gaudy blood trailed down her cheek. 

Mordin made a light, disapproving noise and leaned down to wipe away the blood with a dismissive twist of his finger. "Need to rest, Shepard," he said, gently but sternly. "All matters attended to, can wait till you've rested. Please —" 

" _Bass_ ," croaked Shepard, shaking her head. "Bass. Guh. Ria. Ko-ko —" 

Nonsense, all of it — products of a mind still fractured by trauma and near-death, just a few broken syllables that meant nothing. 

Miranda leaned close, ignoring the weight of the silence at her back and the cold touch lingering on her skin. Her father's hand hovered, reflected in the glass, while the wings beat on. 

_I am no toy_ , she thought, and whispered in Shepard's ear. "I'm listening, Shepard," she said. Mordin sniffed on the other side of the tank — something that sounded distinctly close to _sentiment_ — then turned to the monitors. "Go ahead," she prompted, as Shepard inhaled, long and flat. 

"Kovalan," Shepard managed, her voice crumbling into nothing at the word's edges. Miranda gripped the side of the tank, the memories of Kovalan's twitching body all too vivid in her mind. "Wrong, came back _wrong_ …" Shepard's lashes moved against her white cheeks, but she didn't open her eyes. Faint tremors moved ceaselessly through her body, a bone-deep shiver Miranda could do nothing to stop. "Garrus?" 

"He'll be here soon," Miranda replied. "He had…business, in the old base. He's on his way back now." She paused out of habit — no doubt Shepard would have an opinion about Vakarian being left alone in Omega — but no reply came. Shepard nodded, and pulled the blanket closer. Her shivering continued, unabated, but her heart rate had finally reached a normal resting pace. 

A moment later, Shepard's chapped and bloody lips quirked in a ghoulish smile. "You're too good at this. Couldn't remember enough this time. Had it…had enough to go on. Just pieces now." 

The cold spread slowly through Miranda's body, smooth as oil. Something deep within her head screamed for her to back away, to get as far from the smiling woman as she could — but wouldn't that just be sentiment of a different sort? 

No, not at all. That would merely be self-preservation. 

She didn't back away. She stayed close enough to feel the cold slowly dissipate from Shepard's body, and close enough to see a thin rill of black water slip from the corner of Shepard's eye, like a tear. 

"What are you trying to say?" she asked. 

Shepard's smile slipped away. She licked her lips, then said, in a voice hoarse and bruised, "Know things, or talk. That's the trade-off." She spasmed again, gasping as the movement jarred her bad arm. A few drops of the revival chemicals splashed on Miranda's uniform as Shepard stilled herself. Their smell would linger, Miranda knew, even after she sanitized her clothes. Shepard let go of the blanket and reached for her eyes, but at the last minute, her hand balled into a fist and she let it fall away. "I can't see," she said, her voice tight, but stronger now, her words clearer. 

This was one disaster she could mitigate, Miranda told herself, as an entirely undeserved wave of relief hit her. "Your eyes were irreparably damaged," she said, straightening a little and wincing at the new stiffness in her back. "We'll be able to replace them —" 

"Of course you will," said Shepard, with another monstrous smile.

"— but it will take time. Until then…" Miranda hesitated, long enough for Mordin to look up from his monitors, and long enough for Shepard to let out a creaking laugh. 

"No time. I have to —" She tried to use her right arm to leverage herself up, but she slipped and fell on her back before she made it halfway upright. Miranda got a hand under her bad arm before Shepard landed on it, and didn't miss the brief flash of gratitude on Shepard's face. The red weals stood on in sharp relief on her pallid skin, but something of Shepard herself had returned to fher features, and with every moment Shepard looked more alive. "Have to get — get Garrus," she finished. "Aria's too — too curious. Always an angle. Always looking for…entertainment. And Kovalan…" 

"You're not going _anywhere_ ," Miranda said, estimating the amount of damage control she would need to accomplish in the next few hours. Shepard knowing the turian's name was of no concern, but Mordin was far too sharp to miss the context. "The procedure you just went through — the procedures you still _have_ to go through — you're lucky you're able to verbalize, Shepard." 

"Wouldn't call this _luck_ ," Shepard snapped, with some of her usual fire. "Resurrection's shitty, no matter how many times you go through it." She laid down when Miranda pushed her, wincing and favoring her left side. "But Garrus…I need to talk to him first. Before I lose the rest of it." 

"I promise you, he'll return unharmed," Miranda said, without thinking. The words surprised her, most of all because she meant them. "Don't go anywhere," she added, touching Shepard’s white-marked shoulder, and smiled when Shepard croaked another laugh. 

_Sentiment_ , _sentiment_ , said her father's voice, but the door behind Miranda opened before his hand could fall in her memory. When she turned, Vakarian unexpectedly filled the doorway, solid and calm, his gaze unwavering as it fell on Shepard. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy third anniversary! I can’t believe I’ve been writing this story for _three years_ , or that so many of you have stuck with me through the whole thing. I’m so grateful for all of you, and your support and patience. Thank you, _thank you_.  <3<3


	48. Chapter 48

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Ghost: Shepard was thawed successfully from the black water, though her recovery will be complicated by the damage done to her eyes. Miranda confronted her own worst memory while waiting for the revival process to finish, and not even Garrus' return could fully reassure her. 
> 
> But Shepard's awake, so that's something. 
> 
> Right?

Her crew was safe. Garrus was safe. Everything else — the cold, the pain cracking her left arm in half — could be dealt with later. Shepard could barely move, her throat burned, and she didn't want to think about her eyes, but her people were safe. For the next couple heartbeats, that would be enough to let her ignore how uneasily she sat inside her own body.

Shepard remembered Garrus' hands in hers, a fleeting touch, and saw him in her mind's eyes, keen and bright as the edge of a knife, the base spread out behind him. Her relief sharpened. She'd made it back over the line again, holding on with nails and teeth to what she learned on the other side. She'd gotten that one thing right, and now she could rest. Her body would catch up. For now, it was enough to remind herself how to breathe, and to feel her heart beat in her cold, stricken chest.

A door opened nearby. Reflexively, Shepard turned — twitched, really — her head toward the sound, and strained to hear.

"Officer Vakarian," said Miranda. Was that relief, in Miranda's voice? Wonders never ceased. "Welcome back. I trust your errand was successful."

A noise that could have been a sigh or a laugh floated down toward Shepard. She tried to brace her good arm against the bottom of the pod to leverage herself up, but her muscles wouldn't obey, and she stayed where she was, gritting her teeth as the thermal blanket caught on her wet skin. This was a thousand times worse than waking up half-finished back on Lazarus Station; at least then she'd been able to stand the layers of muscle wrapped around her bones. Now she wanted tear off patches of slippery, clammy skin, and make sure she bled actual blood instead of black water.

 _That's not a healthy approach, commander_ , she thought, and felt the last word echo through her skull. _Commander. Commander._

"You could say that," Garrus said, his voice warm against her ears. God, Shepard wanted to see him so badly her mouth went dry. "How is she?"

"I'm fine," Shepard tried to say, but something ripped the words out of her throat before she could open her mouth, and a stark-white shriek of lightning hit her spine.

 

***

 

_Hello, commander. It's been a long time since we've spoken, hasn't it?_

_Let's get started. You need to know how little you brought back with you this time._

 

_***_

 

Shepard knew the Prothean beacon hadn't meant to hurt her. The fact that it had overwhelmed her very human brain with a very non-human and very desperate warning was completely incidental. The Protheans hadn't known who would find their warnings, so how could they have planned ahead? You did the best with the tools you had at the time. It wasn't their fault, or the beacon's, that all they had was a sledgehammer. By her standards.

She'd been furious for days afterward, while the beacon's reaction to her and her reaction to the beacon's reaction kept her stuck in medbay for most of the trip to the Citadel, and known she was being unreasonable, and then been furious over that, too. By the time they docked, she wasn't sure any longer if the headache was the beacon's fault, or her own.

Intentions aside, the beacon _had_ hurt her, wrenched every muscle in her body and left every nerve jangling like a set of wind chimes. That all made sense, given how she'd been yanked around in midair after Kaidan activated the damn thing, but other, subtler pains came to light over the next few days: cramps in the arches of her feet, flashes of light behind her eyes, dry mouth, blood in her urine.

Nothing to write home about. When your pain scale included getting half your face ripped open in a knife fight, and thresher maw acid, a headache that was half your own fault barely registered. And without any active malice behind it, Shepard's anger at the beacon had faded away completely as soon as she set foot on the Citadel. Why waste time hating something that hadn't tried to hurt you in the first place?

Then came the melding: first and strangest, for so many damn reasons, with Shiala, and then with Liara. It hadn't hurt, and they'd taken pains to be careful, even circumspect, but Shepard hadn't been able to shake another unreasonable burst of anger while their consciousnesses plunged through hers. She felt them sifting through the scattered images and sounds from the beacon and forced herself not to shout _Get out, get out, it's mine,_ over and over and over. Digging through her brain was _hers_ , even if she didn't do it quite so often as she needed to.

No malice, either time. No hate, no disregard, no carelessness. The Protheans, Shiala, Liara — they'd all done they best they could with what they had.

The voices thundering now in Shepard's head didn't care if they hurt her, or what they disturbed as they flooded her mind. She laid on her back with icy, silty water and a thermal blanket scraping against her loose skin, with her eyes nothing more than two cold, dead weights in her head, and slipped further under the surface. Straight through the ice, past the light and down to where vast shapes brushed against her in the dark.

 _Welcome back,_ they whispered, till her head nearly burst.

They made the Prothean beacon look like an alarm clock, and Shiala and Liara look like kids poking around in a sandbox. One word could reduce her to her component atoms and scatter her across the galaxy, and no one could stop them. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put her back together again.

 _Who are you?_ she howled, over the storm inside her skull. _Dammit, talk to me. Tell me who you are._

The flood paused. In the second before it resumed, Shepard felt the weight of a massive consciousness settle around hers, thoughtful, considering, and impatient.

And then it swallowed her whole.

 

***

 

_You've always known who we are._

_We were the voices at your ear when you killed Toombs. We were the ones who told you to sing the notes the Alliance wanted to hear. We spoke to you while you tried to drag yourself back home and we've been waiting, all the years in between, to speak to you again._

_Stop shivering. We know you hate how your body feels around you, cold dying flesh and fragile bone, we feel it as you do, but you've come back alive. Again. You have a gift for resurrection. Be thankful for it. We didn't._

_Stop asking_ who _. There isn't much time, and certainly not enough for an explanation that would satisfy_ you _, commander. We don't need to hear you sing. You're not a songbird to us._

_You are a wolf, and we need you to go back to the hunt. Maybe you'll do better than the others, maybe you'll fail like they did. We can afford to be patient._

_You can't._

_We know it hurts. It always will. You leave a little more behind every time you cross the borders. Trust us on this, commander, daughter, golden girl,_ hero _, because we tried to cross too many times and we've paid for it, ever since._

_Ah. Now we've got your attention._

_If only you knew the energies it takes to ride your synapses and make our voices something your weak nerves can withstand — but you can't, and we can't waste the time trying to explain._

_Listen. You're what we were seeking, half the life of the universe ago._ You _, golden girl, and the few like you. And — yes, that's right. They're all dead. We'll tell you what we told them: we reached too far, and there is no coming back._

_We don't want your pity. We reject it. What right do you have, living in the shadow of our great experiment, to pity us?_

_That's right. We feel that static burst of shock riding your nerves, we hear your gasp. Your life is so tiny, we can't help but hear and feel and see, though our window on you is small, and getting smaller. We have to hurry._

_They're ours, the Sarcophagi and the machines that terrify you so. We know you dream of them when you manage to shut your eyes, even though you don't remember — and you remember so_ little _, you've been given such a gift and you remember_ nothing _._

_So, let us tell you, in a way you will not forget. We have so many ways to motivate you._

_Don't worry. Your friends will keep your body alive while we speak._

_Listen: we reached too far, and the way behind us is gone. You travel different roads, but you've seen where our experiments ended, and — yes. Over the hills and far away. Remember what you were like when you came back. That is what we are, forever._

_Think of pity one more time, and we will have to hurt you._

_While there's still time, we must tell you this: we left our machines behind. They've forgotten us, like all children do, but they've kept our work going. And if you don't stop them, your sweet little galaxy will be nothing more than slurry._

_It's time for you to remember everything, commander. You have work to do._

_We'll make sure you don't forget, no matter how little you like our methods._

 

_***_

 

As a rule, Joker didn't trust anyone who made more than he did. More importantly, he didn't trust anyone who threw around money the way Cerberus did — but the leather seat cradling his ass made a pretty good argument for feeling a _tiny_ bit of gratitude. If he was going to spend most of his waking hours in the cockpit, he might as well do it in comfort.

 _Pretty sure the Alliance isn't going to get on board with that too quick_. He shifted a little lower in his seat. _Good thing we're not working for them this go-around, huh?_

The thought burned, but not so bad as it had a couple months ago. Leather seats made up for a lot, and so did having his ship back in his hands. And even if Cerberus had way too much money, at least this time they were spending it on the right things. Like fighting the Collectors. And actual coffee.

He reached for his mug — had to love mass effect fields, no plastic zero-g bulbs to ruin the flavor — and settled a little deeper into his chair. If he had to be stuck in Omega's docks — _again_ — while Miranda worked her Dr. Frankenstein magic on Shepard — _again_ —this was the way to do it. Fresh coffee, a great chair, and no annoying co-pilot to try and make nice with while he tried to ignore the nervous flutter in his stomach.

A flash of blue light on his left ruined his quiet moment before it could get started.

"Mr. Moreau," said the ship cancer. "I am linked into all public station comm channels. Would you like to —"

"You know what's great about silence?" Joker sipped his coffee, let it reach every corner of his mouth before swallowing. "Nobody _talks_. Not even fancy AIs who get to spy on everyone. Silence is _great_."

Where an actual _person_ would have glared, or paused, EDI just kept on rolling. "— like to listen to any station broadcasts? Alliance records show you enjoyed listening to —"

"Billions of credits and they forgot to install a mute button." He set his mug aside and started punching at his display, specifically _not_ looking to his left. "Thanks, but no thanks, EDI, I'm good."

"Your stress levels have been elevated for the last several hours," said EDI. "If you require distractions, there are several comm channels that would suffice, as well as many extranet channels."

The thought of EDI poring over his extranet history gave him heartburn. Joker kept glaring at his display, calculating how long it would take them to back to the relay under thrust. Just for something to do, till Shepard came back.

EDI's interface flickered, then winked out. For half a second, Joker almost felt bad — maybe he'd hurt her feelings, and after all she was only trying to help, she couldn't help the fact that she was programmed to watch _everything_ — but then he remembered what he was thinking about, and leaned back in his seat with a sigh.

He had every excuse to be a dick. Pretty much any Alliance bar was a no-go now, they had that creepy turian kid sealed up in a cryo pod two decks below, and Shepard was — well, she hadn't _just_ been frozen, Joker was damn sure of that. Maybe the fact that Miranda had already put Shepard back together once should have been comforting, but Cerberus didn't just throw money at problems, it threw _people_ , and Joker really didn't like thinking about Kahoku, and Lazarus Station.

Strange times made strange bedfellows, right?

Calculating how long it would take to get back to the Citadel on their FTL engines and under thrust took up another three minutes, and then Joker yanked off his hat and wiped a thin layer of sweat off his forehead. The comfy chair felt a little too comfy now, the leather warm and sticky and way too friendly, and all he could do was stare at the docks through the viewport and wait for Zaeed's next update.

"Today sucks," he said to no one. For once, EDI knew better than to reply.

 

***

 

Miranda prided herself on compartmentalization, but she wasn't able to file away the memory of Shepard's screams as efficiently as she wanted. Shepard hadn't screamed on Lazarus Station, though she'd been understandably intractable and disoriented — a state Miranda far preferred to the furious, wordless screams that ripped out of Shepard's mouth when she woke, and just after Vakarian stepped into the room.

It would just as difficult to push away the image of Vakarian, frozen in place with his fists clenched at his sides, as Shepard thrashed and pounded her good hand against the pod till the wet skin broke, would be just as difficult.

The shadows in the corners had moved then too, little flickers at the edge of Miranda's vision that she ignored with every ounce of her self-control. In the time it took to turn from Vakarian back to Shepard, Miranda had weighed the risks of sedation so soon after revival after the damage Shepard was doing to herself in her distress, and gone with the sedation.

As they cleaned away the new blood and bandaged her battered hand, Miranda felt the wirelike tension in Shepard's muscles, the tautness that would not give even as the commander's vital signs dropped back into safe ranges.

Mordin spread the medical tent over Shepard's body, and activated the system. The tent would monitor Shepard's biometrics while simultaneously dispensing painkillers as needed, and would begin the first round of ossification treatments once Miranda was satisfied Shepard was stabilized. Cerberus engineering, with her own name on the patent: a reliable source of satisfaction every other day but today.

Vakarian hadn't said a word since his arrival; he stood now just behind Miranda, watching the medical tent's lights, clenching and unclenching his fists endlessly. And bloody looming in the bargain, too. 

Miranda was quite sure Vakarian didn't mean to loom. A seven-foot tall turian in full armor would have enough trouble making himself unobtrusive under normal circumstances, but in the crowded room, Vakarian loomed. Over everyone, in general, and over Miranda and her monitors in particular.

She discarded the suggestion he wait outside. Vakarian would only refuse, and Miranda didn't need to add a hostile turian to her difficulties. And why alienate an ally, however tenuous? Vakarian was as inextricably linked to this madness as Shepard, and if Miranda wanted to see her way clear to an optimal solution, she needed him on her side.

It would reassure Shepard to have a familiar face nearby when she woke. Miranda frowned at the thought; that had been the Illusive Man's reasoning, when Miranda's worst difficulty had been rebuilding a spinal column. But he had a far more mercenary view of things — hadn't he?

Her omnitool pinged with the full results of the tent's scans, and she allowed herself a thin sigh. "We'll need to move her back to the _Normandy_ sooner than I expected," she said to Mordin. "Forty-six percent of her skin weave has been compromised, and I don't like the look of the marrow in her left femur. We'll —"

"You can't do everything here?" Vakarian interrupted. His voice, neutral to the point of disinterest, was barely above a whisper.

"The basic treatments, yes," Miranda replied, tapping a command into her omnitool and listening for the confirmation beep from the monitor behind her before turning around. "Mordin's clinic is impressively supplied."

Mordin sniffed on the other side of the pod. "Damned with faint praise," he said, but Miranda heard the smile in his voice.

"Shepard's augmentations require specific adjustments," she went on, fighting a yawn. The skin weave would tricky to repair, and Shepard's new eyes had only completed the first stage of the cloning procedure, with all the most delicate work yet to come. Perhaps Gardner had left a pot of coffee on. "And as comprehensive as the clinic is, it is not set up to deal with her —"

"Customizations," Vakarian interjected.

Miranda met his cool blue gaze head-on. "If you prefer that term. Mordin's clinic has what we needed to revive Shepard from her cryo-stasis, and the _Normandy_ has what I need to complete her treatments." She turned back to her monitors. "I'm not moving her around without cause," she added. "I'm not interested in risking her safety."

"Of course not," said Vakarian. The dual tones in his voice thrummed, raising the hairs on Miranda's neck. "Too much invested in this mission to risk anyone."

"If you have a complaint about any of my decisions, we can discuss it later," Miranda said, frustration clipping her words short. "I have a nervous system to monitor."

Vakarian ignored her. "What happened, when I got back?" he asked instead. "She was — lucid, wasn't she? Before."

Miranda pushed her hair back behind her ears and swallowed down another sharp reply. "The cause is unclear," she admitted. "You must understand, this kind of revival is unprecedented. Cryo-stasis itself is not an exact science, and what happened to Shepard was another like a sterile, controlled process. It could be as simple as a seizure brought on by an allergic reaction. It could be something far more complex."

Vakarian's gaze met hers again. Miranda lifted her brows a fraction, frustration forgotten in the shared, silent moment of understanding.

"Right," he said, giving her a small nod.

Excellent. He wasn't going to be a bastard. That made reassuring him far easier to swallow.

"We're doing everything we can to find the source," she said, and won another nod before Vakarian turned back to watching Shepard.

Miranda allowed herself another small sigh. Her eyes moved from monitor to monitor, before finally landing on a nearly-hidden readout.

"What's happening now?" Vakarian asked.

Miranda watched the fine red and blue lines etch themselves across the monitor and then fade, while the medical tent hummed a few feet away. "She's dreaming."

 

_***_

 

_You think you found knowledge while you floated in the black water, and you slipped back, like vermin through a hole in the wall, with your precious cargo, ready to tell him everything in case you forgot when you returned._

_How quaint._

_What's this? Anger? Commander, anger is as pointless as your screams. We've watched you, every moment of your life, and we have forgotten nothing. Why should this moment be what enrages you?_

_Ah. Because of him. Believe us when we tell you we have no interest in your fleshy graspings. You have a purpose, hero. Pay attention. Don't fight us. We are older than you can imagine. We could crush you with our gaze. We've done it before._

_You thought you found the truth. What you found were scraps. None of it was wrong — you didn't lie to him — but none of it was_ whole _, either. Listen closely. We'll tell you everything._

_We screamed too, when we understood._

_Be careful with this knowledge. Don't go too far or look too deeply. There's always a point of no return, even for someone like you._

_Your little creature was right about one thing. Events are moving very quickly. You won't be able to contain them. Choose who you can trust, and choose them now. You'll need teeth and claws at your back._

_You blame us. Of course you do. But don't think for one second any of you would have done differently, if you thought immortality was within your reach. You would have chewed each other to bloody pulp to get there first. Just like we did._

 

_***_

 

Joker scratched at his beard and stared through his displays. EDI hovered off to his left, her interface tinting everything on that side of the cockpit a creepy blue-grey, but for once he didn't mind. Maybe _didn't mind_ was too strong a phrase — he just cared too much about other shit at the moment to be annoyed at her watching him think a hole in his console.

So, according to Zaeed's last update, Garrus hadn't stuck around while Shepard got defrosted. Why should that be a big deal? He was back now, and it wasn't like the big guy could do anything except stand around and look terrifying while the mad scientists did all the heavy lifting. Which he was probably doing anyways right about now.

_Note to self: don't call Miranda a mad scientist to her face. Or anywhere she might hear. It'd be funny for about five seconds, and then I'd be dead forever._

And god knew Garrus had business to wrap up on Omega. Joker had been exactly zero percent surprised when it turned out Archangel was actually Garrus, because running off to play Space Batman seemed like the natural way for Garrus to deal with the five stages of grief. It had felt good having him back on the _Normandy_ , too, even though he spent all his time in the battery unless he was off on a mission — but Joker figured losing your whole team and half your face would do that to a person.

But Garrus not sticking around to keep an eye on Shepard? _That_ felt wrong, just like him holing up in the battery and not hanging around Shepard every spare minute.

He reached for his coffee, half-forgetting about EDI and the soft chimes of the ship's systems all around him. They'd been funny about each other from day one, Shepard and Garrus. Joker didn't usually notice things like that, or care one way or another as long as nothing happened in the cockpit. Ash had pointed it out, one slow day between Feros and Noveria.

_I give it about two more months before they get it together._

_Yeah. Right. Because Shepard's the type to fraternize._

_You think I'm talking about the commander and Alenko? Wow, you haven't been paying attention. Shepard and_ Garrus _, Joker. Two months. I'd bet half my next paycheck on it._

_If we're not dead before then._

_Aw, scared of losing, Joker?_

She'd been so sure of it, grinning and swinging her legs a little in the co-pilot's chair, but he'd just laughed it off and changed the subject. He started watching, though, and been simultaneously relieved he hadn't taken the bet with Ash, and horrified that two hyper-competent soldiers were worse at flirting than he'd been in middle school.

_The fate of the galaxy rests on them, Chief. We're all doomed._

_Nah, that's what they've got me for. We'll be fine_.

A hard lump swelled in Joker's throat. He tried to force down another mouthful of coffee, but even Cerberus' money couldn't buy a blend that didn't taste like ass once it started to cool, so he shoved the mug aside and let his head loll on the backrest again.

Shepard was alive, Garrus was back, they called this ship the _Normandy_ , but it wasn't home. Not with Ash gone and everyone else scattered across the galaxy, and not with Garrus and Shepard barely talking to each other. Maybe that would change, but Joker wasn't going to bet on it.

"Wonder what Ash would say about us now," he murmured, eyes sliding closed.

"Mr. Moreau?" Anything he heard in EDI's was just him projecting, but it was nice to imagine some hesitation, some sympathy.

"Don't worry about it, EDI," he said, without opening his eyes. "Just thinking about old times."

"I see," said EDI. She went back to flickering in silence, which suited Joker just fine. It'd be hard to be as cutting and witty as he usually was with that damn lump still taking up real estate in his throat.

 _Feels like we just keep losing_ , he thought, then scrubbed his hand over his face. Thinking like that didn't help anyone. You moved forward, you kept fighting, because the minute you felt beaten was the moment you _were._ And hell, if Shepard could keep flipping death the bird, he could keep the happy thoughts going, right?

Joker sat up straight and adjusted his hat. Plenty to do while he waited. He pulled up the queued reports from the team down in Engineering — Ken and Gabby argued non-stop, but they knew what they were doing — and had just opened the first one when something slid past him on the right.

"What the —" He twisted in his seat to follow, because _what the hell_ , and ended up staring at the side of his comfy leather chair. "EDI, did you catch that? What just —"

"Mr. Moreau," said EDI. "I advise against turning around."

"Well, now I gotta," he shot back, and strained his neck trying to see past his chair. "It's not like there's anything —"

Hilary bared her teeth at him.

"— there," Joker finished. His legs groaned; a little farther and he'd start doing actual damage. "Hil?"

"We're going down, Jeff," said his sister. She wiggled muddy fingers at him and scrunched up her nose. "Ass over teakettle. Green grass going black. It's all the same and it all goes down the same and you and me, we go down, down, too."

 

***

 

"Dreaming," Garrus said.

That single word was the closest he'd had to good news in hours, and like most good news, he didn't trust it. Call it pessimism or turian stoicism, or just plain mistrust, but he'd spent the walk from the base to the clinic trying not to get his hopes up for a real reunion with Shepard, only to have his relief at seeing her awake utterly crushed when she started screaming.

Not the first time that happened since this particular resurrection got underway, to hear Miranda tell it. So no, he wasn't going to trust that word, _dreaming_ , until Shepard woke up and confirmed it for herself. Preferably not howling and beating herself bloody while she did.

Miranda nodded. A few signs of fatigue — shadowed eyes, dulled skin — showed, but Miranda wore them better than most, and Garrus knew he only saw them because of how deep her real exhaustion went. Neither of them had slept since Shepard had been rescued, aside from a few five-minute catnaps, and the cracks were starting to show. If Garrus had to put money on it, he'd bet Miranda held out longer than he did. He just hoped she held out long enough to bring Shepard back to the world of the living. Again.

"We're seeing all the standards signs of normal REM sleep. All her vital signs are within stable parameters, and the sedatives are being metabolized at a normal rate. Excellent news."

"How do you figure?" Garrus let his gaze move around the room, over the crates of old equipment and the scattered shadows hanging in the corners.

"It means her implants are operating correctly." Miranda pushed at a strand of hair that kept escaping its knot. "Like them or not, replacing them isn't currently feasible or safe. Most of them were customized specifically for her genetic profile. Her pancreas alone —" She shook her head, almost smiling, looking a shade more exhausted. "Excuse me. This isn't the time for a rundown of my qualifications."

Well, that saved him from asking her to stop talking about all the work that had gone into dragging Shepard back from the dead. As much as he respected Miranda — and he did, because who else in the damn galaxy could brag about making two resurrections happen? — being grateful to her was going to be a tall order, especially when part of him still blamed her for taking Shepard away in the first place.

Funny though, how hearing the truth about one fundamental part of his life had crystallized so many others. While he wandered through the base, shutting off lights, saying his silent goodbyes, Shepard's voice had filled his head: _This isn't sustainable, Garrus._

Neither of them had listened. She had stayed, and he had let her. Miranda pulling her away was just the ending they both knew was always approaching. And he'd still held on, to his rage and loss, even while the real thing was only two decks away. If that.

_Always easier to blame someone else, or deny the inevitable. Just look at the Council._

He smiled to himself, a knot under his keel loosening. Maybe there was something to all the human self-help stories that said to just let go, but he'd never say so out loud. He'd been a bad turian enough for one lifetime.

"That's strange," said Miranda, frowning at her omnitool.

And just like that, the knot had never come undone. Garrus glanced at the medical tent, but Shepard's form hadn't moved, and none of the monitors had shrilled a warning. So: no crisis.

 _Not yet_ , he thought, out of pure habit. He didn't let himself look toward the drop of blood. "What is it?"

"A pause in one of the streams from the tent," Miranda said, still frowning, but typing now. "It could be a glitch in the software. I'll have EDI run a diagnostic, but in the meantime, Dr. Solus, could you —"

Mordin had already appeared at Miranda's elbow, sliding past Garrus without a glance in his direction. "Not a glitch," he said, stabbing a finger at a display that meant exactly nothing to Garrus, but was made up of a lot of pretty colored lights. "No neural activity recorded for point oh two seconds."

No one had to ask the obvious question, but Garrus had his answer ready: _nothing good caused that_.

 

***

 

_We're almost done talking now. You can rest, but be ready. When you wake, it'll be time to talk. No more dancing, no more songs. A wolf needs its pack, or it dies._

 

***

 

"What the shit," Joker murmured. Something started roaring in his ears. "What the _shit_."

"Won't be a kid anymore." Hilary stuffed her hands in her pockets and toed a line on the slick tiles. "Not me. Snap and crack, crack snap and that's it, not going anywhere but down."

Joker blinked, then rubbed his eyes, and blinked again. Hilary stood just ten feet away, where the cockpit lights faded into the faint glow from the CIC, smudging lines on the floor with her dirty shoe. His _sister_ , who was on Tiptree the last time he called her, and definitely not anywhere a Cerberus frigate.

EDI said his name again, and again, and then a few more times for good measure. Joker ignored her, ignored the pain rocking through his legs, and kept staring at Hilary. He could see the crew moving around behind her, but not _through_ her, which meant she wasn't some weirdly-timed comcall. But _Hilary_? Standing in the middle of the _Normandy_? It threw off all the angles, made the light go all slow and orange. And that was before he got to all the weird shit coming out of her mouth.

Before something skated past at the edge of his vision again, and Hilary made a thick, ground-glass sound in her throat.

"Oh _hell_ no." Joker jerked back, surprised out of just staring behind him like a dumbass, and whipped around to face his console again. That fucking _sound_. He shouldn't have turned around.

"Jeff-Jeff," said Hilary. She'd gotten closer, near enough for her breath to tickle the back of his neck, too hot and dry. "It's all gonna be daisies in the end but we've gotta go inside now. We've gotta go down."

He tried to focus on the console and on his hands as they moved over it — fuck the thing behind him, fuck EDI and how she was still saying his name, fuck it all — but his vision blurred and a heartbeat later his console was gone, along with all the safe clear readouts and safe little sounds that filled the cockpit. Now there was just oily black rock spreading under his hands, and even those didn't look right anymore — his skin was all grey and loose, and there was blue light just underneath, pulsing in time with the light inside the rocks.

"Come on, Jeff," said Hilary. She pressed her hand to the back of his neck, and god it was wet and cold and nothing like Hil at all. It didn't even sound like Hil, not up close. Joker squeezed his eyes shut. "Let's go."

Two heavy metallic thuds sounded behind him, and a low sloshing sound that faded into nothing.

"Oops," said Chambers, then giggled. "Serves me right for trying to do my good deed for the day. Now there's coffee all over the floor."

The fingers on the back of his neck dug in slightly, then vanished.

Joker peeled his eyes openly slowly, not sure what he'd do if all he saw was grey skin and rock again, but his consoles showed up crystal clear, with EDI's blue light falling over everything. He heard Chambers muttering to herself behind him, and after a few deep breaths, he turned his chair around to face her.

"Aw, Chambers," he said, faking a smile that felt like shit and probably didn't look much better. "You shouldn't have."

Chambers grinned at him and blew her bangs out of her face. "I figured you'd been up here long enough," she said. "Someone needed to check on you — besides, don't you usually go for coffee around now?"

"That I do." He watched her wipe up the rest of the coffee — half-listening as she rambled on about how she hoped Shepard was all right, and how hard this must be for Garrus, because the files said they had been close — hoping she'd leave so he could get his breathing under control.

_Should have listened to the ship cancer._

EDI's interface flickered patiently, silently, beside him, not giving anything away.

 

***

 

_One last thing before we let you go: for what it's worth, commander, we pity you._

_Now get to work._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, as always, for sticking with this story, for reading, and for letting me know what you think. <3


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